Episode 252: Gender, Intersectionality, Health, and the Climate Crisis with Petra Verdonk

Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil

The impact of the patriarchy on health care and climate change is one many of us might be aware of but do not know much about. Today Dominic hosts Petra Verdonk to discuss exactly what these consequences are and how they appear in our daily lives. Find out more about how climate change consequences are unequal, how gender-based violence is one that happens all around us, what solutions are to integrating gender into healthcare and research, and more!

Petra Verdonk is an occupational health psychologist who earned her PhD in 2007 at Radboud UMC in Nijmegen with the dissertation Gender Matters in Medical Education. Most recently, she founded her own agency, Beyond Boundary, where she works at the intersection of gender, intersectionality, health, and the climate crisis.

Her research and teaching focus on the critical analysis and implementation of gender and diversity in health and care. Moreover, Petra oversees scientific quality and anchoring of Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, advising editors and identifying relevant developments in feminist theorising and gender studies.

Petra co-founded the Dutch Society for Gender & Health (NVG&G), where she still serves as secretary, and chaired Stichting WAHO, an organisation advocating for young women with work disabilities (2001–2007). She was also a board member of the Women’s Union (FNV Vrouw, 2008–2016). Finally, as a climate activist with Extinction Rebellion, she co-founded the Dutch community XR Zorgprofessionals. At VU University, she successfully campaigned to end research collaborations with the fossil fuel industry.

The International Risk Podcast is a weekly podcast for senior executives, board members, and risk advisors. In these podcasts, we speak with experts in a variety of fields to explore international relations. Our host is Dominic Bowen, Head of Strategic Advisory at one of Europe’s leading risk consulting firms. Dominic is a regular public and corporate event speaker, and visiting lecturer at several universities. Having spent the last 20 years successfully establishing large and complex operations in the world’s highest-risk areas and conflict zones, Dominic now joins you to speak with exciting guests around the world to discuss international risk.

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Transcript:

Dominic Bowen: Welcome to the International Risk Podcast, where we explore people, places, and the issues shaping global risk. Our guest today is Dr. Petra Verdon. She’s an occupational health psychologist, a researcher and founder of Beyond Boundary. In our conversation with Petra, today, we’re gonna gain some insight on the intersection of gender, health and even the climate crisis.

In a world where a warming planet disproportionately harms women and girls. Through things like food insecurity, disrupted healthcare, increased gender-based violence, and of course exclusion from decision making. In many cases, Petra’s gonna help remind us that risk isn’t gender neutral. This is a conversation for every policy maker, business leader, and politician.

Petra, welcome to the International News Podcast.

Petra Verdonk: Good afternoon, Dominic. Thank you for having me.

Dominic Bowen: Petra. In your research you’ve called Climate Change a risk multiplier, particularly for women and marginalized groups. Can you walk us through how that Malter Apply Effect operates in real world settings?

Petra Verdonk: Yeah. This has to do with women’s roles in societies in general. So women are more often in vulnerable positions. They have to do the, things that make the world turn somehow their productive work: creating babies, taking care of children, older families, taking care of sick people in very many countries.

Also agriculture especially small holder farming. So when things get disrupted by the climate, by weather. Extreme weather or disasters or by increasing temperatures in particular, these reproductive roles of women are at risk. So that’s one thing Women’s health is at risk by the climate crisis, even more than men’s health because of this fertility and their, their pregnancy, their reproductive characteristics.

So that’s an issue I’ll hope Will will get into that bit more.

Petra Verdonk: So women carry the burden of reproductive work. They produce food, they collect water, they’re caretakers of, families, and we are breaking down life sustaining systems. That’s what the climate crisis and the ecological crisis is doing, and women are on the front lines there.

When water is getting further and further away, they’re in trouble. They have to walk for longer. For more hours to get water. For instance, during their walks, they are more prone to attacks and violence. So these are all examples of how things can get even worse for women and girls.

Dominic Bowen: And can you help many of our listeners, or in fact most of our listeners we’re, we’re really blessed.

We have, you know, thousands of listeners that download every episode. But the huge majority of our listeners are based in Europe and North America and Southeast Asia countries and locations around the world that are generally in a really good spot. You know, they’re highly developed highly advanced economies.

We know that when we look at the data globally, women are affected more by climate change than men are. And they do experience disproportionate impacts on their livelihoods, their health, their safety, and their overall wellbeing, as you just explained. But it’s probably difficult for many of our listeners in in Stockholm, and Oslo, and London, and Brussels and DC to really understand, how is it with, women and men, we all have access to natural resources.

Women and men all have access to jobs. We all have access to the same health centers. Can you help us understand why is there and what does the actual reality look like? Not just what our, some of our listeners might experience.

Petra Verdonk: Yeah. Well, if you talk about low middle income countries, then it’s very clear, right?

It’s very obvious. there’s no water, or the water is getting more scars. But this is also happening in Spain For instance, so Spain has a big water problem, and it’s also coming to the Netherlands, a country where people complain that it’s always raining. It isn’t actually, we’re facing drought, we’re facing floods, but we’re also facing droughts like the provision of drinking water in the Netherlands of 4 million people, is at stake here. So people don’t realize that it’s also here. One other example is that due to sea level rise and also due to drought, the soil is becoming salinized. This affects drinking water. It gets saltier.

This affects women, pregnant women, for instance. It will affect high blood pressure. So there’s all sorts of examples all over the place that affect men and women, but women more and that has to do with women’s position in society as well. So if you look at heat waves in the Netherlands, we see that over 200 people die in heat waves.

On average, the, the Red Cross and our weather stations, they call it a silent killer. It’s a disaster, really like Anything that could happen that kills 200 people in a few days would be front page news, right? Except for heat waves. And what we see in the Netherlands is that older women, they’re more often poor, they’re more often live alone.

They more often live in urbanized neighborhoods, lots of stone and brick and concrete. They are less healthy, so they have more often chronic conditions. They can’t go out as much because the heat. They have no money, so no mobility, no cars, no money for taxis, whatever. So they’re slowly cooking in their own homes.

So these are like examples where gender inequality and women’s positions in societies also in. Countries like the Netherlands that are like top 10 wealthiest countries in the world still affect women more.

Dominic Bowen: When we talk about disasters, I, I know when there’s sudden onset disasters, we see a spike in, in gender-based violence. And I’ve seen this in, in my career in, in countless countries from a Iraq and, and Syria, but also to natural disasters in, in places, like Fiji and, Vanuatu. There’s an almost predictable nature that the gender-based violence does spike after natural disasters. I mean, we even saw this in America after the New Orleans, disaster. Can you help us understand why are these patterns so persistent and what are the structural failures that allows this to consistently repeat itself across geographies and across cultures?

Petra Verdonk: Yeah, and this is, this is one of the most frightening, I think for many people, most frightening effects of, disasters. I think this is like not a normal, but a normalized response of men towards any disruption of masculinity. So if there’s like their favorite soccer team loses.

They take it out on women, like you can see that every Sunday evening. The other team, the non-winning team gender-based violence spikes. So this is what happens in patriarchal societies where men dominate women to. Control over women to have control over other men, marginalized men.

So this is. the way we have organized our societies, and that’s pretty much across the globe. We have exported this type of structure and gender order across the globe where men control resources, they control power, they have social status, et cetera, at the expense of women. And disasters tend to disrupt that, right?

They break things down. they break down men’s roles because they cannot provide as they were expected to. They lose their status. They don’t know what to do. They’re hurt and traumatize themselves. So you take it out on women to gain back that sense of control and that sense of masculinity.

It’s a simplified version. I agree, but yeah, this is pretty much what happens.

Dominic Bowen: And again, if you can help us understand, we know that people that generally listen to the International Risk Podcast, are quite senior in their careers. They’re often from very good careers. And I imagine, and I hope that most of our listeners haven’t really experienced this and we, we know that generally speaking, Europe has made significant legal and, and social progress towards gender equality, but.

There’s still societies, there’s still large parts of communities and countries that have this patriarchal structures and attitudes that that, that are still retained. And from the stats that I’ve seen parts of Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary still have very large divergence in pay gaps and, and patriarchy.

how common is it? I mean, you used the example of the soccer games, but I, I think for many of us and, and many of our listeners where we, do, and you know, I’m, living and working in Sweden at the moment, where society is very advanced.

There’s still differences. Between accesses and gender equality in, in many cases. But, you don’t see examples like you talked about. You don’t see the high levels. I’m sure it still occurs, but can you help our listeners understand a little bit more about how prevalence patriarchy still is in, Europe today?

Petra Verdonk: Gender-based violence is everywhere. You probably run into it every day without noticing. It’s that prevalent. Like one, in about five women faces partner violence in her lifetime. And that already start very early at the age of 15, 16 with first partners. And once women have experienced that their risk of, becoming again a victim of, of partner violence increases because it, it kind of sets the tone for how relationships are.

It is extremely prevalent and it extremely invisible in our societies. In fact, Sweden is one of the countries with a very high partner violence rate. one reason why we know that is that what has happened in Sweden is that women are also more ready to report. And that’s why we know. But in many of our countries, just don’t know because it’s not reported.

The responses from police officers when women report sexual and gender based violence is very often a very low standard. So this is a major public health issue. And in all of our societies, so I would never call our societies advanced in that regard. Not ever.

We do have legislation. We do have healthcare that is highly underpaid. And under-resourced, still very important. But violence against Women is I think, one of the biggest scandals in, modern societies, honestly. So when a disaster occurs, this is such an easy such an easy common.

Of trapped to fall back into this type of relationship, this domination of women to try and gain control and feel better and take it out on deal with frustration. Yeah. Yeah, it’s terrible. It’s terrible and we’re nowhere near advance, I would say.

Dominic Bowen: you mentioned at the start of your commentary just then that if someone has been the victim of domestic violence, they’re more likely to be the victim of, domestic violence in subsequent relationships.

And, and I think by one study that I’ve seen up to 50% of domestic abuse cases in, in Europe from, victims that have been victims before in previous relationships. Can you help us understand whether it’s the relationship dynamics, the psychological factors, the social factors the systemic structures within our systems and education and, social services?

What is it that leads to this repeat? a big victimization?

Petra Verdonk: that’s a big question. And it’s all of that. Basically it’s all of that. One thing is that women they’re structurally trapped in bad relationships, instance, economically and financially. That’s one reason they can’t leave because there’s no housing.

They have lower salaries than men, which is one reason why economies do such a bad job in gender equality. And do not target the pay gap, sufficiently, for instance. So this is a big obstacle for women to leave. Then there’s traditional gender roles. Women take care of the children, so they have to make sure that they can provide for the children, that they can still be a caretaker that is not.

Taken out on the children when they leave. Particularly important is that people realize that leaving a dangerous partner is the most dangerous moment in a relationship in the Netherlands. Every, 10 days a woman loses her life Femicide. and this is very often the moment where women, leave their partners.

That’s so incredibly dangerous. So when they try to contain their partner and try to figure out how to deal with him and avoid being, beaten or, or harassed or abused. It makes total sense for all sorts of reasons. And then there’s this particular thing, the psychological thing is also that like women start blaming themselves.

that’s part of the abuse. Like, you’re stupid. It’s not true. It’s, if you wouldn’t do this, then I wouldn’t be so angry if you would behave. Then I and so this is. Like the dynamics of relationships that, it’s so very easy to, to blame other people and gaslight them and make them doubt themselves.

And when you are raised like that as a girl already, I. That you’re, you know, less worth, that you’re not as clever, that you’re not as strong, that you’re it all builds on, what happened before. So I think, these are also reasons why women enter. Or stay in relationships that are bad for them.

And there’s also love. There’s also that like they often also understand like the trauma and they, we’ve done a study in refugee women on sexual and gender-based violence against them. And they suffered a range of, issues like before, during, after the flight, once they’re safe, for instance, in the Netherlands, but also in asylum seeker centers, in refugee camps.

It’s on and on and on. It’s one terrible accumulation of violence like that. They were, in fact, trying to escape. And then they’re here and they’re, trying to start all over. Their kids are safe, et cetera, and then the dynamics in the relationships start happening. So they begin to develop themselves.

Maybe they find a job, there’s some money. their self-worth and their, you know, they start developing social networks, et cetera. And then sometimes for men, that’s terrible. It’s difficult to watch, especially when they are the victim of the targeted, the dangerous other in a society that discriminates against men, in particular against black men or men of color who are seen as dangerous in us racist and dangerous for our women, et cetera. So our society’s trapped men in this role, the women are trapped in their gender role. The men cannot fall back on their traditional relationship and their traditional status that they maybe had in the country of origin. And there you go. And if there’s no situation or no group of friends that can hold men accountable because we don’t talk about it, women don’t talk about it.

But maybe if they do, they talk with other women seldom. But if they do, but men among themselves do not talk about these issues and that would be a life saver and changer I think. Men started talking about these issues.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I remember when I was working with, unicef, we deployed a, a male, generally speaking people that work in gender-based violence within unicef, the United Nations Children’s Program are women.

It’s just one of those, you know, 95% of people that work there, women. But we deployed a, a male to work with communities in eastern Kenya. And the first thing, and we’re actually like, oh, this is the. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know at the time, like, I don’t even know if I’ve seen a, a male, person working on sexual and gender based violence before.

I’m like, I wonder how the community’s gonna appreciate this. And the first thing the community said is, oh. Thank goodness for once it’s a male talking about, issues that males are causing, not a female get. And it was so well received. It was so well received that men could talk about issues that yeah, men were perpetuating and creating and causing and sometimes suffering from as well.

So it was, made a really big difference. Yeah,

Petra Verdonk: I really think that men suffer from this. I mean, that’s not. Not to blame men. They should stop being violent against women and children and, and other people. I mean, there’s no doubt about that, but they suffer from it. Their lives could be so much better.

We’ve done a project with refugee men on this issue, trying to bring them together in groups to discuss these issues and, It’s continued also for the center, like the Sexual Assault Center in the Netherlands. They, collaborate still with, asylum seeker centers and, and young men bring them together in groups.

So a lot of this work, like on, sexual and gender-based violence focuses on women, but it also focus on men.

Dominic Bowen: Definitely for sure. And I would lot of your work, Petra has been integrating gender into healthcare and even biomedical research. And I know this is an area where, gender remains and the work on gender equality remains in complete.

You know, there’s some really interesting concepts which I’d love you to explain to us in more detail around why women and and girls often have delayed diagnosis and even things like pain bias and research disparities when pretty much. The population is 50 50. You wonder why and how there could be research disparities.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And, and even things like access barriers. I, I think for many of us, we would just look and go, we all have access to healthcare. Where is the barriers? So can you help us understand some of these, some of these topics?

Petra Verdonk: Yeah. Well, medicine is a patriarchal enterprise to begin with, right?

Health and healthcare has always been a women’s domain until it became science and until it became modern medicine. And that’s where men took over and decided that. This is how knowledge should be collected and created and how to do it, and whose problems were important and who was the person who could be a researcher and who could be a doctor.

So this male patriarchal history of medicine still haunts us. And that’s still embedded in the way we do research, in the way we treat patients in the consultation room. That’s still happening. So this way of thinking that there’s a neutral patient, that the doctor’s neutral, when in fact both patient and doctor are based on a male model.

Of how to treat patient, but also who to treat and which problems of that patient are relevant and important and matter and require knowledge and thus require money for research and bring status if you’re a researcher, et cetera. Then if you realize, and that’s still continuing, it’s white it’s masculine, and it doesn’t speak to everybody the way it claims to do. So we have a lot of knowledge on white male bodies in particular of men between 20 and 40 around that age. Men in reproductive age, there has been a lot of experimenting also on women, on incarcerated people, on people of color.

I mean, the until there were big scandals and then ethical guidelines came in. In the seventies, we’ve had soften on and death scandals, that were really terribly affecting women’s health and, women’s offspring. The ethical guidelines said at the time, to protect women, we should not include them in drug experiments.

So women were, as of then excluded from experiments and now we are stuck with a lack of knowledge in women’s health. So it’s not only that, it’s also which issues were studied. We talked about violence earlier. That’s one thing that has been addressed by the women’s movement in the 1970s.

if we talk about a multiplier, that’s a big multiplier of health risks. Like anything like from your migraine to your autoimmune disease, to heart disease that affects everything. And so these issues are to date still understudied and there is still a lack of funding for women’s health.

So there I could go on and on about this. So maybe you have to stop me somewhere.

Dominic Bowen: No, that’s good. And you’ve really started to explore a, a topic. I wanted to explore with you a little bit more today. that’s around intersectionality. And, you know, I’ve had the benefit of, of working with that in humanitarian context around the world.

And, you know, it’s that framework for understanding how different aspects of people’s identity, race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, ableness, all create unique experiences. US discrimination, but it also gives us privilege for many of us that there’s compounding factor on compounding factor that leads to, you know, massive levels of, of privilege.

I think the term was created in the late eighties actually, but it’s, it still hasn’t fully permeated to all parts of society and to consider it, I was actually running leadership training for syrian humanitarian organizations, a couple of weeks ago, and we did a bunch of exercises to help these leaders.

And, these were male and female, leaders who were running humanitarian programs in, in Syria, but we ran exercises to help them understand the real disadvantages and advantages that some of their staff and some of the people working in their teams, volunteers and day workers might bring. And you know, there’s some great activities you can do that really highlight these privileges and disadvantages really quickly.

But can you help us understand when you are speaking with business leaders, when you’re speaking with academics, when you’re speaking with policy makers, do people understand it? Or are you getting resistance and pushback? Do you see it put into practice?

Petra Verdonk: I don’t speak with business leaders. So that, that’s never been my role. but I do speak with researchers and with policy makers and with young health professionals. Actually, I think people do understand it, but you need to explain it well.

You said the concept was coined at the end of the, eighties, but it is way older, like the notion that race and gender and sexual identity are grounds for discrimination in the labor market, et cetera, and therefore keeping people in poverty. there’s always a class element there because there’s no access to the resources that society gives to the white and the already wealthy and the male and the, the heterosexual, so that concept is very old already, but as a term, intersectionality was coined in the 1980s. But I would like to give credit to the queer women of color who, who, developed the thinking actually behind this, this idea. It’s actually. Pretty simple to explain. People get it like, yes.

So when I talk about myself, I’m a white woman. I’m 60. I am highly educated. I grew up in the Netherlands. I have all sorts of privileges and there are so many problems I do not have for the position that I’m in. And I’m also not the same woman that I was when compared to who I was when I was 15.

Now my husband and I are both 60, we’re both white. We both grew up in the Netherlands, but age does something else too. His being a man and his masculinity, does something else to his aging, and it’s the same thing for me. So I go through female specific life stage, such as menopause. I face age discrimination more quickly, more often because I’m a woman.

So when I, I give these examples, people do get it quickly. So that’s, I think that’s easy to understand. I think it’s easier to understand than to think in two boxes. There’s men and women and all women are the same and all men are the same. And people realize, yeah, we’re all different in all sorts of ways.

but then trying to incorporate that in research, how to do it in your policymaking, that’s a next step. And there you have to try and continuously ask the other question who is it that I’m centering here? You know, who did I have in mind when I made this policy for who is this for? Did I actually ask these people like, I’m developing something for girls?

Which girls actually, what’s the color of their skin that I’m thinking of, and did I involve them in my decision making? So if you start doing that, it becomes more work at the beginning, but also more effective in the end. I.

Dominic Bowen: Definitely. So if you, if you were sitting in front of a government cabinet or even the board of a, a multinational company, what’s the one misconception about gender equality, about climate risks that you’d wanna correct immediately?

What would you say to them? What would you urge them to do differently starting tomorrow?

Petra Verdonk: I saw this question and it’s a fantastic thing, fantastic question that we always get. I’m also a climate activist in my life, and one of the things I have learned from my climate activism with Extinction Rebellion is that the solutions are not the problem.

The solutions are there, they’re available. The problem is not always and very often not what we should do or how we should innovate that somehow, like the problem with this kind of innovation bias is that we forget the thing about what we should stop doing and. We should stop polluting. We should phase out fossil fuels.

We should stop dominating girls and women. We should treat people as equals. We should do not unto others. What we do not want to be done unto us, we should take responsibility for the way we, you know. IV to the planet, to other people. So that would be, what are you going to stop doing? That would be my first question, I think too.

What are you prepared? Where are you prepared to take the pain of transition?

Dominic Bowen: And Petra, when you look around the world, there’s so many risks that are impacting us in so many different ways, but what are the risks that concern you the most?

Petra Verdonk: The risks that concern me the most. I think at the moment, I think we’re breeding fascism. That’s what concerns me the most at this point.

And that’s a response to, climate uncertainty. It’s a response to changes in the world. It’s a response to losses of power of countries that should definitely stop grabbing power. And what concerns me the most is really like, I think it was the. I’m not sure, I think it was the president of Peru saying Gaza is a rehearsal of the future.

And I would, yes. I think the genocide in Palestine and the, the example that it poses with, the military technology the use of ai, the technology used to control people. To make sure we stop protesting to make sure there’s no change. There’s only benefits to the rich.

Yes. That concerns me the most. It would be great if you could tell that to your business leaders.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, that was a very interesting quote. I remember that back in, I think it was 2023 when, it was Gustavo Petro said, you know, Garza is the rehearsal of the future and just the violence, the massive levels of violence.

You know, that was. Targeting it and dramatically when we all saw this, these catastrophic photos and videos of, women and children being slaughtered as well as the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, which is only worse today in 2025 than it was when this statement was made.

But absolutely, I think his point about this. It was that preview of, of what violence and repression can be unleashed on. People really could and, and may only increase in, in the coming years. And, and very sadly, when we see what’s happening in Ukraine, what we’re seeing, yeah, even in Civil War in Sudan and sadly what I fear might happen in other countries in the very near future is I think it was a very apt quote.

So thanks very much for raising that and. Thank you very much for coming on the International Risk Podcast today. I really enjoyed our conversation, Petra.

Petra Verdonk: You’re welcome. I loved having chat with you about these issues and uh, I hope it raises many questions.

Dominic Bowen: Well, I hope so. If we can, if we can at least raise the questions and get people discussing the topics, even if we don’t give all the answers.

I think we’ve, made some strides in the.

Petra Verdonk: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Dominic Bowen: Well, that was a great conversation with Petra Verdon. She’s the founder of Beyond Boundary. I really appreciated hearing her thoughts on the intersection of gender, intersectionality, health, and of course, the climate crisis.

Please remember to go to our website and subscribe to our newsletter to get it in your inbox every second week to make sure you’re up to date with all our news book reviews, and of course, our podcasts. Today’s podcast was produced and coordinated by Elisa Garbil. I’m Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks for listening.

We’ll speak again next week.