Gender inclusion: a climate solution

The importance of gender-inclusive climate change mitigation policies

DARIA FARMAN-FARMAIAN: It’s women’s history month, and climate change is more relevant to the conversation than ever as rising sea levels, increasing global temperatures and frequent extreme weather events disproportionately affect women. This is because women are more likely to live in poverty, face systemic violence globally and have less access to basic human rights, such as freedom of mobility and land acquisition.

Gender inequalities are deepening globally in the face of climate disasters because, according to Mayesha Alam, a leader on climate, women’s rights and conflict studies at Yale University, women and girls “overwhelmingly undertake the labor of gathering food, water and household energy resources.” Climate change makes it harder to manage these traditional household responsibilities, especially in remote rural areas.

Climate events such as natural disasters can hurt water quality and availability, forcing women to travel longer distances to collect water for cooking, cleaning and managing gardens. This means less time pursuing outside sources of income and, as a result, encourages more economic dependence. Water scarcity also impairs women’s ability to invest in their careers as they spend more money on water and energy bills and have less access to agricultural, commercial opportunities.

With resource depletion and increased global warming, alongside a lack of autonomy from missing land rights, come dangerous social impacts. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, environmental stressors help fuel the rise of gender-based violence, child marriage, human trafficking and labor exploitation, which women are particularly vulnerable to. Climate displacement also disproportionately impacts women who are more likely than men to experience poverty and therefore have more challenging times recovering from climate crises. 

The dangers of climate displacement to women are seen in Northeastern Nigeria, where terrorist group Boko Haram targets women displaced from their land by drought. In this way, violence against women is used to control limited resources in challenging circumstances. 

The gendered effects of climate change are not only causing harm globally but also in our own backyard. The coronavirus pandemic has shown that women experiencing economic and racial inequalities experience disproportionately the negative effects of national and global crises, including the climate one. Because gender inequalities are worsened by racial and economic injustice, climate impacts hurt Indigenous women, low-income women, and women of color unevenly.

Climate change is both a race and gender issue. This can be clearly understood in the effects of New Orleans’ Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A study showed that during this disaster, women of color were less likely to escape or recover than other identity groups. A rise in gender-based violence and elevated levels of PTSD especially among Black women were also identified, even though the majority of rebuilding efforts were led by women. 

In this way, the inequalities that disproportionately harm women during climate crises are also the inequalities that are preventing them from getting involved in climate mitigation leadership. Though it is shown that increased female political presence leads to the creation of more ambitious climate policies, women and people of color are continually pushed out of environmental organizations.

Even at the highest levels, gendered analysis is missing from climate dialogue. Gina McCarthy, White House climate advisor, has pointed to the racial justice implications of climate change but not those of gender. As the US experiences more extreme weather events, flooding, droughts and wildfires, women need to be at the focus of the dialogue. 

Domestically, the Biden administration needs to pay special attention to the role of gender in its sustainable infrastructure plan. It must apply a gendered lens to its projects, looking across all sectors including labor, housing, energy and more. Additionally, women need priority access to federal sustainability investments that are being directed towards disadvantaged communities. 

Globally, a gendered approach is just as important. In fact, gender, climate, and security are inextricably linked. The US therefore needs to engage with more female leadership abroad in climate mitigation efforts and aid must be distributed with a gendered lens in mind. 

Female inclusion within the climate dialogue is necessary at all levels. Women can be powerful fighters against climate change, evident in the work of high profile leaders such as Greta Thunberg, Sweedish environmental activist and Ugandan activist Venessa Nakate. When women have a seat at the table, the community benefits at-large through increased food security, investments in health and education and land management. 

This is evident in Kenya where Charlot Magayi is helping women replace dirty cooking stoves with clean alternatives in order to improve community health and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Female representation has also proven fruitful in other climate-related sectors such as science and waste-production. 25-year old Miranda Wang is the CEO and co-founder of Silicon Valley start-up BioCellection which breaks down commonly used unrecyclable plastics using a chemical technology. 

Diverse female participation is important for people facing climate change around the world. And, as climate change affects more and more communities globally and infiltrates further aspects of human life, it is clear that women’s leadership is needed across all sectors to address the universal human rights, security and economic threat that is climate change.