Adapting Coastal Settlement to Climate Change: Insight from Ecofeminist Perspective

In recent decades, the relationship between gender and climate change has become a central theme in various discourses. This is due to the massive environmental destruction recorded across the world, including along the coast of Sayung sub-district, with women and other vulnerable groups being the major victims of these environmental problems and social-ecological crises. This study, therefore, aimed to better understand the coping strategies and solutions used by gender-based coastal communities in facing types of disasters. The ecofeminist viewpoint served as both a theoretical framework and an analytical tool in examining the problem of tidal waves and land subsidence along the Sayung Demak coast. This perspective could capture the reality of women and vulnerable groups, as well as their adaptation process, through the expression of personal experiences with the existing conditions. In conclusion, current developments have significantly marginalized women and other vulnerable groups into economic adaptation, physical adaptation, and survival (quietly) with existing conditions. The findings of this study show several types of adaptations made by women in facing the climate change crisis. Based on an ecofeminist perspective, climate change is not sudden but results from a capitalistic and development paradigm. As a result, it impacts women and the environment, especially on the coast, with the occurrence of tidal floods (rob), floods, and abrasion. Women respond to this condition through economic, environmental, and physical adaptation. This condition implies that people's living space, especially women's, will disappear or become more complicated if this condition is not handled wisely through regulations and policies on development in coastal areas. ©2024 The authors.