Climate Change and Gender Disparity: Women Suffer More
The current and future harms of climate change disproportionately impact women more than men. As flooding, fires, droughts, and storms continue to occur and intensify, it is apparent that climate change will exacerbate existing gender disparities. Both globally and domestically, social, economic, and cultural factors make women more vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. Due to food insecurity, climate displacement, lack of property rights, and shortcomings in educational and economic access, women face greater burdens when it comes to climate change.
Although women are disproportionately impacted, their involvement in climate change policy-making is limited. Women remain highly underrepresented in government and decision-making circles, both in the U.S. and around the world. This underrepresentation prevents women from partaking in climate resiliency planning that could benefit women and families. A first step in narrowing the gender disparity in climate change is to enhance women’s political participation. A second step is to acknowledge the many ways women are disproportionately impacted.
Poverty, Natural Resources, and Displacement
Women’s worldwide poverty rate is contested. On one hand, the International Labour Organization claims that women make up 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people living in conditions of poverty. On the other hand, the World Bank contends that the accurate number is 50 percent. Either way, one thing is clear – the poverty rate is high and continues to be a major factor threatening women worldwide.
Living in poverty makes women more dependent on local agriculture and day-to-day natural resources such as fresh water and soil. Floods and droughts jeopardize access to natural resources. Floods contaminate fresh water sources and severe droughts make reliance on agriculture untenable. As primary caretakers and providers of food, it falls on women to respond and take charge when these natural disasters occur. This often leads to displacement. For example, in 2010, floods in Pakistan impacted about 14 million people and of those 14 million people, over 70 percent of those displaced by the floods were women and children. In the United States, it is also women who are most impacted by natural disasters and climate change. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it was women – particularly African-American women — who were impacted the most. The depletion and drying of Lake Chad in Central Africa is another example. Due to the fact that up to 90% of the lake has disappeared, it now falls on women to travel much further to collect water for cooking and drinking. No longer having access to this natural resource directly harms women and their livelihoods. Women are faced with two options — be displaced and forced to migrate to other regions or countries where they have no legal immigration status, or put themselves in danger by walking long distances, often alone.
Climate Crisis, Inequitable Distribution, and Decision-making
Women continue to face challenges because of traditional gender roles, the inequitable distribution of resources, and exclusion from decision-making. More often than not, it is women who are the primary caretakers for their families. Thus, when climate crisis strikes, women who look after children and the elderly are not able to quickly escape vulnerable areas facing either fires, floods, or hurricanes. Women stay behind. According to Evicted by Climate Change: Confronting the Gendered Impacts of Climate-Induced Displacement, a report by CARE International, a humanitarian non-profit, poor women are 14 times more likely to die from a climate disaster than men.
Regarding the inequality of resources, although women are often the main food providers in their families and contribute 50-80 percent of the world’s food production, they own less than 10 percent of land. This, plus the fact that they face restricted economic mobility, limits women when deciding how to better mitigate and manage climate-related risks to agricultural production. Men can use their economic independence, invest in alternative income sources, move to areas less impacted by climate change, and otherwise adapt. Moreover, the lack of educational access for women living in poverty is a major hurdle to combating and adapting to climate change. For instance, the World Health Organization highlights in Gender, Climate Change and Health, that only 21 percent of Indian women have access to weather alerts and cropping patterns as compared to 47 percent of men.
Women are given a minimal role in shaping climate resilience and displacement prevention policies. CARE’s report (mentioned above), points to the lack of worldwide inclusion of women when international governments and international agencies discuss solutions and mitigation tactics. If climate change disproportionately affects women, women must be included in this decision-making. A direct call to action is directing at least 25 percent of humanitarian funding to organizations with a focus on women-led initiatives.
Domestically and internationally, a gender-just approach to combating climate change is necessary.