Trending discourses and silences around the role of women in wildfires: A systematic scoping review and some reflections from the field

Abstract

In mainstream social imaginaries, wildfires are still a ‘manly’ issue. Addressing the question ‘how are women depicted in the literature of wildfires?’ this paper systematically analyses current literature on this subject. We identify five roles of women in a sample of 81 papers, and we show that women's roles are repeatedly structured as follows: women as impacted by wildfires, women as holders of particular knowledges and perceptions, women as firefighters, women as caregivers, and women as setters of fire. We supplement this analysis with our own observations from fieldwork in wildfires in Spain, Chile and Sweden. Our analysis of these roles allows us to depict a diversity of women's capacities, vulnerabilities and contradictions beyond discourses around virtuosity or victimhood; to discuss how and why women's various roles are unequally valued or avoided; and to consider the interconnection of gendered discourses on women and wildfires across geographies.