Women and Chemicals

Conclusions and
recommendations
During the expert workshop on women and chemicals, which
took place in preparation for this study, it became very clear
that “chemicals and women” is an emerging issue in the scientific
community. Most of the studies in this field have been
completed just in recent years and there are many more in the
working. However, there is yet a lack of comprehensive compilation
studies that offer a substantial overview on specific aspects
related to women and chemicals. One of the very few
overviews in the field is the book “Breast cancer, pesticides and
you” by Meriel Watts. Compared to issues like gender and climate
change and energy, gender and water and sanitation, and
gender and biodiversity, the issue of gender/women and
chemicals is scientifically not yet well researched. More needs
to be done in the fields of chemistry and biology on the impact
of chemicals to the female body and secondly on the socioeconomic
dimensions of exposure of women to specific hazardous
chemicals. In all these areas more information and especially
gender disaggregated data need to be gained.
Recommendations
This study is only the first step, as more information
needs to be explored and compiled by:
• searching for best practice projects in implementation, capacity
building and awareness raising and their indicators
for success;
• collecting more gender and sex disaggregated data on issues
like exposure scenarios, impacts of hazardous chemicals on
women’s health, activities to reduce exposures for women;
• developing indicators for better measurement of hazardous
chemicals’ impacts on women, especially through more research
on sources and pathways of exposure.
Yet with the information at hand, immediate concrete
action can be taken by:
• issuing a handbook on women and chemicals, with articles
from experts presenting the latest in-depth information and
research on women and chemicals;
• supporting the issue of women and chemicals as a priority
issue under the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals
Management (SAICM);
• integrating a gender focus into existing funding schemes;
• allocating and providing funding for projects on women
and chemicals.
To support the goal of empowering women and
protecting them from hazardous chemicals, the
following immediate action points are recommended:
• make the most vulnerable group, in this case children and
pregnant women, the norm (and not the exception) for
developing threshold limits, where there are safe threshold
limits;
• support mandatory labelling of all chemicals in products to
ensure the right to know;
• strengthen women’s rights, in particular their participatory
rights, in all aspects of decision making, chemical production,
use and disposal;
• clean up all chemical and heavy metal polluted ‘hot spots’
to protect the population living nearby and avoid further
contamination;
• implement the precautionary principle for chemicals which
are harmful or suspected to be harmful to human health
and environment, by regulatory measures.
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