Addressing Gender Inequality in Climate Change Programs and Policies

The United Nations’ groundbreaking Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were signed by all 189 member states at the turn of the century in 2000 with eight goals aimed at reducing global poverty and its related consequences by the year 2015. In addition to income and hunger, the goals are tied to health, education, gender inequalities, and sustainability. However, as we quickly approach the goal-line in the upcoming year, many countries are far from reaching their projected improved states.

In 2008, the United Nations observed the first International Day of Rural Women to raise awareness about the critical role women play in the completion of the MDGs. This day highlights the contribution of women in rural areas, including the challenges they face against the threats of climate change and poverty. In many developing countries, women undertake crop production and livestock care and provide food, water, and fuel for their families; in many cases traveling hours each way to collect these items, while also caring for children, the elderly, and sick. Today marks the seventh annual observation of the day, yet despite increased awareness surrounding the contributions of women and the challenges they face, there are still major barriers to improvement.

A farmer who has cleared weeds from her maize plots near the village of Bejling, Himachal Pradesh, India. Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT on Flickr

In many parts of the world, male-dominated societies are the norm. Women are much less likely to own their own land, inherit property or manage a family’s finances: major reasons why women make up 51% of the population but 70% of the world’s poor. For example, fewer than 1 in 10 females in India, Nepal, and Thailand own land, where in Mexico, women make up only 21% of total property owners. In male-headed households, each family member on average eats fewer calories per day when compared to female-headed households, due to the observed fact that men allocate a greater percentage of income to personal use. This doesn’t mean women are performing less work, either. In fact, many poor women continue to suffer miscarriages, injuries, and death due to hard labor—including 9 hour walks to fetch water and cooking in unventilated kitchens over open fires.

Impacts of climate change on already marginalized women

As we experience effects and come to better understand the environmental impacts of global climate, we are also becoming increasingly aware of its human impacts. With increasing concerns about the effects of climate change on the already marginalized state of women in the developing world, there is a shift in focus towards better understanding how each gender reacts and adapts to climate change. Women and men will certainly bear dissimilar challenges, even if based just on gendered division of labor, and amplified by existing inequalities.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that little research has been done to understand how men and women will adapt to climate change in the coming years. In their Success Stories on Climate-Smart Agriculture, the FAO cites its recent work in Andhra Pradesh, India as an example of this lack of understanding concerning gender norms. In order to combat this apparent gap, the FAO partnered with CGIAR’s Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) program to develop a training guide that allows researchers to more easily access local communities thereby gathering critical and more nuanced insight into gender and climate change. The Training Guide for Gender and Climate Change Research in Agriculture and Food Security for Rural Development will allow policy makers to utilize knowledge gained from this research to develop more effective climate change legislation, in turn, helping each country to better reach their goals of assisting the poor adapt to climate change.

Opportunities for addressing gender inequality

There are four major opportunities for addressing gender inequalities in climate change programs and policies:

1. Understanding and addressing gender-specific resource-use patterns that can degrade the environment
2. Recognizing that women are already more vulnerable to poverty than men and therefore have gender-specific needs in climate change-driven scenarios
3. Identifying women’s particular skills and capacities in various aspects of their household livelihood strategies and natural resource management that lend themselves to mitigation and adaptation
4. Strengthening the quantity and quality of women’s participation in decision-making at all levels in climate change mitigation and adaptation

For example, women who currently lack ownership of their land or lack access to finances for purchasing land may be unmotivated to adopt costly or inconvenient climate change adaptation measures. Even if the will is there, they may be unable to mitigate the effects of desertification due to their inability to purchase irrigation systems for their land. The FAO and CCAFS have combined efforts to prevent such hardships. Offering masculinity courses allows men to cope with the norms imposed on their gender and teaches them to accept a woman’s role in family financial planning. By further understanding gender’s role in climate change mitigation, overall productivity could increase, levels of hunger will decrease, and families will be better prepared to face disasters and challenges in the future.

What other great programs and resources out there are working to close the gap between the genders and understand how climate change affects women and men?