This paper explore how current climate policies are taking gender into consideration, and how they could better take into account the specific impacts of climate change on women. The findings and recommendations are based on desk research and theoretical analysis through a gender lens of climate policies from both developed and developing countries across the globe.
The fight against climate change and its devastated impacts are of concerns of all countries, developed and developing, concerning all World citizens. However, vulnerable communities, including women, are the frontline victims. Notably, due to historical, social and cultural structures – women tend to work more with natural resources such that when these natural resources are averted due to climate change- women are at the harsh receiving end. For instance, in rural settings, women are more responsible for fetching water, gathering food, such that in the instant of droughts, women have to take long trips in search of water. Women are heavily overworked, highly impacted by climate change and underrepresented in this regard. This conundrum is shedding light towards more gender-conscious climate policies.
Although not all climate policies expressly highlight the specific impacts of climate change on women, there seems to be a positive move towards including women in climate change policies’ texts as well as policy making processes. Such steps are more prominent in developing African countries, which some have included gender considerations and the specific impacts of climate change on women. On the international scene, recommendations have been put forward by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to ensure gender conscious climate policies, through its Gender Action Plan (GAP). Women should be involved from the developmental stage of the policy to its implementation stage. Although, gender inclusion is not moving at a fast desirable rate, the initial inclusion of women who were once marginalized in climate change talks is a pivotal change. There is however a lot that ought to be done to ensure the relevant involvement of women, as true agents of change, in the climate policy sphere.
This paper will specifically look at (i) how current climate policies are taking gender into consideration? and (ii) how climate policies could better take into account the specific impacts of climate change on women. The findings and recommendations are based on desk research and theoretical analysis through a gender lens of climate policies from both developed and developing countries, from across the Globe.