Is There A Connection Between Gender and Climate Vulnerability?

11/17/20224 min read

It is commonly perceived that “[women] and girls experience the greatest impacts of climate change, which amplifies existing gender inequalities and poses unique threats to their livelihoods, health, and safety”, and that consequently women are more at risk (than men) from the impacts of climate change (UN Women, 2022). A 2016 study concluded that “women continue to be underrepresented in climate policymaking and finance activities”, that women “often lack access to assets and power”, and that “the caring roles that women inhabit adversely impact their capacity to adapt to climate change” (GGCA, 2016).

Not only is climate change a “threat multiplier”, it also intersects with other forms of inequality, resulting in acute risks for “indigenous and Afro-descendent women and girls, older women, LGBTIQ+ people, women and girls with disabilities, migrant women, and those living in rural, remote, conflict and disaster-prone areas” (UN Women, 2022).

In drawing a link between gender and climate vulnerability, there is a need for nuance and sensitivity in our framing of gender. Balikoowa et al (2019) note “the ambiguity of gender” – it is unclear whether in this discourse gender ought to be understood as biological sex, and/or “the norms, behaviours, and roles that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex”. For example, certain reports (such as the GGCA report of 2016) focus on the social construct of gender, while Balikoowa et al (2019) appears to have adopted the biological definition. In an 2022 interview with UN Women, Matcha Phorn-In commented:-

"Humanitarian programmes tend to be heteronormative and can reinforce the patriarchal structure of society if they do not take into account sexual and gender diversity…" (UN Women, 2022).

In their 2019 study entitled ‘Gender-Differentiated Vulnerability to Climate Change in Eastern Uganda’, which involved a cross-sectional household survey of 803 farmers in a highly climate-sensitive area of Uganda, Balikoowa et al concluded that, while female-headed households were more vulnerable to climate change than male-headed households, the difference was not significant. The reasons for higher vulnerability of female-headed households, in comparison to male-headed households, can be summarised as follows:

1. Women tend to possess fewer assets and opportunities and are more resource constrained.

2. Women are impeded by gender stereotypes from hiring labor, which explains the gender gap in agricultural productivity.

3. Female-headed households generally came about due to the absence of adult males, meaning that such households would consist of fewer household members available for labor and earnings than a male-headed household.

4. Female heads of households were mainly widows, and therefore were likely to have shared their deceased husband’s lands with their children or his family members. Unmarried female heads of households had no access to land via marital attachments.

5. In the subject areas, the predominant system is labor intensive and less feasible for female heads of household who are already responsible for food security. The resulting discouragement from holding large livestock means reduced financial diversity or food security.

6. As caregivers, lone mothers have less time to cultivate social networks and would be deprived of the informative and financial benefits of those networks.

(Balikoowa, 2019)

The authors concluded that “gender may not be the best dimension along which differences in vulnerability to some climate change manifestations can be assessed,” and further cautioned that, if gender is overemphasized in such debates, “it misinforms the direction of adaptation planning, as resources are allocated based on wrong assumptions about vulnerability outcomes” (Balikoowa, 2019). As such, they recommended “further intersectional studies” in order to “more accurately capture how gender interacts with other household variables like age, ethnicity and religion, and how their interactions cause different vulnerability outcomes” (Balikoowa, 2019).

I partially agree with these policy recommendations. While it is important to apply intersectionality in the analysis of any complex issue, we should also bear in mind the prevailing circumstances that situate the vast majority of women (however defined) in subordinate roles within all modes of inequality.

"Examining gender is important because women, men, boys and girls, while hardly homogenous groupings, tend to have systematically different experiences in relation to climate change based on the inequalities associated with socially constructed gender roles." (GGCA, 2016)

Due to “entrenched social norms and socio-economic structures”, women tend to be disproportionately affected by factors that influence one’s vulnerability climate impacts (Carbon Brief, 2020). According to Goodrich et al (2019), “gender is not only a powerful and pervasive contextual condition, but [also] intersects with other contextual conditions to shape vulnerabilities.” Gender is at the heart of any discussion on vulnerability. “Gender plays a key role in determining the degree of vulnerability of an individual but, more importantly, it is the combination of gender with other axes of social differentiations that shapes vulnerabilities” (Goodrich et al, 2019).

Not only is there an undeniable link between gender vulnerability and climate vulnerability, because gender is inextricable from any individual’s interaction in the political, social, economic, and cultural contexts, we must situate gender at the centre of any discussion of any form of vulnerability.

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