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Climate change has profoundly unequal effects on different peoples around the globe. The worst affected from global warming will be the poorest countries, who have contributed the least to carbon emissions over the last few centuries. Within these countries, climate change has a greater impact on the most marginalised or poorest sections of society: those most reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods, or who have the least capacity to respond to natural hazards. One of these disadvantaged demographics of the global population is women.
Climate change unequally affects women
Owing to discrimination and entrenched gender norms, women are impacted on a greater scale than men around the globe; 80% of people who have already been and will be displaced by climate change around the globe are women, according to the UN. Recovery from extreme weather events is more difficult for those living in poverty-stricken communities and these difficulties are compounded when a gender dimension is taken into account. In many developing countries, while men work away from the home, women often work tiny plots of land to produce food for their families without irrigation, work that is entirely reliant on natural resources and weather patterns. For example, in Asia 57% of female workers (compared to 48% of males) rely on agriculture-related livelihoods. This is estimated to increase to between 60 to 70% of total agriculture labour when counting unpaid ‘household’ farming[1]. Despite their roles in agricultural production, women are often landless labourers, because of traditional, patriarchal systems – inheritance laws and settlement programmes usually give sole title of the land, and hence the security of obtaining production, to males. In addition, gender norms dictate that women are usually the last to eat in this type of agricultural household. So, these women will bear the brunt of environmental shocks with the least security to regain their land, facing greater risk of starvation and depleting health when water and sanitation systems are jeopardised.
Natural disasters unequally affect women
According to a 2007 study of 141 countries over two decades[2], women are more likely to die during environmental disasters than men. A particularly disproportionate disaster was that of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which killed four times as many women as men – a shocking statistic, the causes of which are suggested to be that women were often not taught to swim, or had gone back in search of children or relatives. This trend is not limited to the Global South. A Western example of disparate gendered impact of climate change is that of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that hit low lying cities such as New Orleans. Increasing evaporation and larger capacity of the atmosphere in holding water vapour due to climate change has been implicated in strengthening Atlantic Hurricanes by up to 30%, including Katrina[3]. This hurricane infamously impacted the New Orleans African American population much more, because of higher poverty incidence. However, 26% of women were living below the poverty line compared to 20% of men - more than half of the poor families in New Orleans were headed by single mothers, reliant on interdependent communities for survival and resources that were heavily limited due to displacement after the hurricane. Single mothers often have little or no income of their own, responsible for caring for themselves and their children. In addition, women make up a greater proportion of the elderly, typically one of the groups with the highest mortality rates during disasters—especially when, as in the case of New Orleans, hospitals are not evacuated (WPR). Women often face a series of gendered challenges as they evacuate, seek shelter and attempt to rebuild their lives after events such as these. Emergency shelters are often inadequately equipped to support women (for example, with sanitary product supplies), and incidences of violence against women, including sexual assault, have been observed to increase (see figure).
Women are underrepresented in climate change policy-making bodies
As well as women’s increased vulnerability to adverse climate change effects, they also often face barriers to basic education, employment and ownership of property, leaving them voiceless in advocating for their vulnerability. This is a consequence of women’s unequal participation in decision-making processes and labour markets in general around the world, that compound gender inequalities. Regarding climate change, this can be seen in the underrepresentation of women in climate related planning, policy-making and implementation from international to local levels. Ironically, at the household and community level, women often have most useful local knowledge of sustainable resource management and practices due to their experiences as early adopters of many new agricultural techniques, first responders to crisis and decision makers at home. Therefore, excluding women in local political participation can only increase existing gender inequalities by channelling funds to men rather than women, and decrease effectiveness of implemented climate change policies.
At the national and global level, the average representation of women in climate negotiating bodies is improved – but still below 30%. Some countries are obviously much lower than this – for example, six female delegates represented Bangladesh in the 2018 COP conference - just 8 % of the country’s 83 total negotiators (but an increase from 2 delegates in 2017). In fact, in 2019 only 5 out of 15 constituted bodies of the UNFCCC had female representation exceeding 38% - a decline from 2018. Meanwhile only 27% of heads of national delegations for climate decision making bodies were women (Gender composition report). This trend extends into the scientific sphere, responsible for conducting and presenting climate science to UNFCCC policy makers – less than 20% of the word’s meteorologists and geoscientists are women. This statistic has multi-faceted causes, including inequality of opportunity and education, as well as everyday sexism that makes these roles more inaccessible for women. This underrepresentation has led to the terming of the ‘Manthropocene’ – the leading scientists that are studying the new planetary era defined by human activity and man-made climate change are dominated by white, northern male voices (Kate Raworth). The UN has highlighted the need for gender sensitive responses to the impacts of climate change, but it is apparent that there is a lack of progress in achieving equal representation even at the highest levels.
Women are overrepresented in climate activism
Only two factors have been identified to impact whether people accept climate science to make personal, environmentally-conscious behavioural changes in Western nations: gender, and political belief. In 2017, a survey from Yale found that women are more likely to agree with climate scientists, be more concerned about climate change, and believe in the extent of its destruction, than men are (see Figure). In addition, an International Labour Organisation study in Geneva (2018) found that female economists are more likely to support environmental policies than male economists. Why is this? Why do women seem to care more for climate change (on average, and in western studies) than men?
Some hypotheses for answers to this question link to things previously discussed in global gender norms: women make the consumer decisions of a household, women are more reliant on natural resources, women are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. In addition, it has been argued that women, as child bearers, care more about the welfare of future generations, and as holding innate stewardship roles in society, tend to be more collaborative, long term, and global in thinking.
In response to this trend, we have seen the emergence of gendered lenses on climate change, epitomised by ‘ecofeminism’. There are multiple strands of ecofeminism, including the idea that women and the environment are exploited in the same way by patriarchal dominating forces (women are hurt most by the exploitation of the earth because they are most vulnerable in a patriarchal society (Leigh Grammar)), and the more biological notion that the feminine gender is uniquely connected to nature and empowered through aspects such as menstruation and childbirth.
Maybe we should approach it from the other side – perhaps it isn’t that women care more than normal, but that men care less than normal. Men are the default against which everything is measured in Western society, so maybe that is why it is generally perceived that women care more. There has been a defined psychological link between perceptions of femininity and environmentalism in multiple studies on participants throughout Europe, the U.S. and China; eco-friendly behaviours are cognitively linked with being more feminine. Perhaps being seen to care for the environment emasculates males in the Western world. I have certainly seen this manifesting in people I know, or have witnessed it in my experience of climate activism in the UK.
Conclusions
Women, as natural resource managers, have unique perspectives on how to help stop environmental damage on a local level, but if their voices are silenced, they can’t help. One of the proposed mechanisms to solve this issue is the implementation of gender responsive finance. Effective projects of this nature should ensure reduced gender inequalities by empowering women as well as addressing climate change. Take for example, a climate project used to fund sustainable public transport. Do women feel safe while using the system? Can they afford the fare? Does the schedule meet their specific needs? Without answering these questions, the project will not serve a large part of the population. It is high time for decision makers and funding mechanisms to fully support women on a local level as important stakeholders in climate action. Over the last ten years, advocacy groups have pushed for more recognition of the gender dimensions in climate finance. So far there has been some success –for example, the Green Climate Fund, which started its operations with an explicit gender equality mandate. This is an important step but there is still lots left to do. On an international level, the patriarchal structures are notoriously difficult to dismantle, as it means eroding a system that has been in place with men’s wants and needs at the forefront for hundreds of years. Climate change policy is just one sector of society where gender discrimination disproportionately and unfairly disadvantages women; gender discrimination pervades the entirety of our global political, economic and social frameworks, abetted by capitalism. Climate change policy is yet another example of where treating the male experience as default negates half of the population, and causes unequal damage to that half of the population by ignoring their experience. Climate change policy will have to form part of a wider reaching, global transformation of the way our countries’ economies and politics are run, and a gender dimension to each of these issues cannot be ignored.
Author: Beth Davenport
References
- ‘Gender differences in public understanding of climate change’, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (2017), https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/gender-differences-in-public-understanding-of-climate-change/
- ‘Gender and European Economic Policy: A Survey of the Views of European Economists on Contemporary Economic Policy’ (2018), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/kykl.12166
- ‘Is eco-friendly unmanly? The Green-Feminine Stereotype and Its Effect on Sustainable Consumption’, Aaron R. Brough & James E. Wilkie. Journal of Consumer Research, https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/43/4/567/2630509?redirectedFrom=fulltext
- ‘Climate change impacts women more than men’ , BBC Science and Environment, (2018), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43294221
- https://medium.com/@tabitha.whiting/why-women-care-more-about-climate-change-than-men-a3d5ecde31eb
- Gender issues: the role of women in agriculture sector in India - http://indianresearchjournals.com/pdf/IJMFSMR/2013/September/15.pdf
- Food sovereignty, food security and democratic choice: critical contradications, difficult conciliations https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2013.876996?needAccess=true&instName=University+of+Durham
[1] Doss, C.R. 2010. If women hold up half the sky, how much of the world’s food do they produce? Background paper, 2011 State of Food and Agriculture Report (SOFA Report), FAO, Rome. [2] Neumayer, E., & Plümper, T. (2007). The gendered nature of natural disasters: The impact of catastrophic events on the gender gap in life expectancy, 1981–2002. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(3), 551-566. [3] Davidson, Jordan (July 12, 2019). "Study: Climate Change Linked to More Rain in Hurricanes". Ecowatch. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
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