Women in waste labor: a bibliometric analysis (2000–2025)

This study examines academic literature on gender mechanisms in waste labor, a field central to environmental sustainability and social equity. Women are widely documented as central participants in waste work, yet existing literature often treats gender descriptively rather than analytically, favoring biomedical and behavioral perspectives over structural analysis. Employing a PRISMA-guided Scopus search, 559 English-language articles (2000–2025) in social sciences and environmental science were analyzed using Biblioshiny and VOSviewer. Results show a 10.17% annual publication growth, strong USA-China collaborations, and productivity adhering to Lotka’s Law. Institutional output is concentrated among Chinese medical universities, focusing on biomedical toxicology rather than socio-economic or labor research. Gender terms, particularly “female,” occupy a peripheral, descriptive position within the thematic structure, while socio-economic and biomedical clusters remain largely disconnected, bridged only by a toxicologically-coded term rather than a labor-oriented one. These findings offer bibliometric evidence consistent with, rather than proof of, the need for ecofeminist and structural approaches that integrate exposure risks with labor rights, address systemic exclusions, and advance SDG-aligned waste equity through interdisciplinary synthesis.