Climate change and inequality are deeply intertwined. Globally, it poses a threat to women and girls' lives, livelihoods, health, safety, and security. The issue of gender inequality is often addressed by portraying women as mere victims without acknowledging their contributions as climate actors.
Due to disproportionate power relations and structural barriers, climate disasters have a greater impact on socially disadvantaged communities including women and girls and pose unique threats to livelihoods, health, and safety. In many regions, including India, women bear a disproportionate responsibility for securing food, water, and fuel. Conversely, they lack asset ownership and the skills and knowledge to cope with stressful climate events. As climate change is viewed through the lens of intersectionality, in which inequality is often intertwined and exacerbated, it is clear that climate change poses acute threats for women with disabilities, LGBTIQ+ people, migrant women, and women in rural, remote, conflict-ridden areas. This compounded burden caused by climate change was acknowledged by the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2019.
When policies and actions fail to take gendered impacts and responses into account, they yield inequitable outcomes and exacerbate existing inequalities. With the adoption of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, an ambitious agenda was set for development action over the next 15 years, emphasising poverty, inequality, and violence against women as key challenges of the 21st century. Additionally, the 2015 Paris Agreement urges member states to adopt gender-responsive approaches to climate adaptation and capacity-building efforts.
Decision-making processes historically prioritise the masculine voices, making women and their concerns virtually invisible. In governance and work, the state overpowers women institutions by maintaining masculinity. We know that such a situation can exacerbate women's vulnerability to the absolute extremes due to climate change-related stress. Recently, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has begun to focus on gender equality. In addition to the traditional issues of women's participation in negotiations, the new policies at the UNFCCC influence decision-making in important thematic areas, such as adaptation, capacity building, and finance.
The Government of India officially welcomes the adoption of the Gender Action Plan (GAP) during the UN Climate Change Conference in 2014 in Lima, promoting women's full, equal and meaningful participation as well as promoting gender-responsive climate policy and mainstreaming a gender perspective in the implementation of the Convention among all stakeholders at all levels. However, India's National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) drafted in 2008 fails to mention the importance of gender-transformative principles. In spite of such omissions, policy discourse assumes gender neutrality when designing adaptation and mitigation efforts to deal with climate-related stress. Rarely are there discussions that attempt to expose an apparent masculinisation of the discourse in the NAPCC in India or elsewhere.
Climate change is dominantly framed as a technical, industrial, and diplomatic problem, consistent with hegemonic masculinity. Climate change policies are therefore framed to protect economic growth and create a green economy in the domain of men and masculinist values. A critical examination of the NAPCC in India would bring out an apparent masculinisation of the policy discourse. The reason for this restricted mention is due to gender biases in planning, which predominantly reinforce gender inequalities. In this way, the masculinised climate politics perpetuate the status quo of 'women's work' and 'men's work'. In order to interrogate such differential power relations, an intersectional climate lens can uncover the specific labouring bodies produced, and reproduced, by green economy approaches. It examines how gender, race, social practices, institutional arrangements, and other categories of difference in individual lives are implicated in power relations in a green economy approach.
Consequently, the policy narrative needs to be shifted towards intersectional power imbalances in the making of environmental citizens. The policy might consider how low carbon industries can prioritise health, social care, and education. Embodied politics of climate change ultimately allows us to consider the true intersectional costs and benefits of climate solutions, particularly as they are experienced in everyday life by marginalised groups.
On the other hand, in spite of highlighting gender vulnerability, it is also important to note that focusing purely on vulnerabilities may be misleading, since women often possess skills, coping strategies, and knowledge that could be used to minimise the impacts of crises, environmental change, and disasters.
Women as active agents of climate adaptation
Women are active agents and effective promoters of climate adaptation and mitigation despite their vulnerability to climate insecurity.
Women should therefore be considered as key players in any potential environmental policy. The absence of women from effective decision-making bodies leads to a lower participation of women in green federal governance.
During the 8th GEPDF on 2 July 2013, the gender perspective on climate policy in India was discussed. Despite India being among the most vulnerable countries in the world to global warming, the forum noted that it is vital to engender the voices that will be responsible for drafting climate policies. However, despite notable efforts for mitigation and adaptation, gender equity has not been considered, even though women and girls bear a disproportionate burden of climate change. Under the NAPCC, women are identified as vulnerable subjects of climate change but not considered equal partners in any of the eight national missions. In addition, they are equally techno-managerial and gender blind, without any room for bottom-up planning.
The 25th GEPDF, held on 17 May 2018, focused on how forest rights are organised in the country for vulnerable populations and how that affects the everyday lives of women. The forum observed that a tokenistic approach to community engagement is prevalent in mainstream forest policies. The GEPDF's goal was to view forests as an ecological and environmental concern, which is embedded in forest communities that are also economically, socially, and culturally connected to the life of forests and yet face displacement as a result of development. Rather than considering women as victims, the forum seeks to reorient policy thinking to see them as actors and partners. Socio-economic factors constantly change the profile of communities and institutions, making it necessary for policy makers to be agile when it comes to understanding social barriers and creating models to overcome them.
The 27th GEPDF held on 5 October 2018 discussed air pollution's adverse effects on health, productivity, and the economy. The forum analysed how air pollution is affecting both urban and rural spaces in a gendered manner, and how gender influences adverse effects on health and inequalities. Secondly, the GEPDF highlighted the importance of linking air pollution with climate change. By focusing only on greenhouse gas emissions, we will fail to address the local effects of climate change that adversely affect people. Several examples from the field were presented to illustrate how indoor and outdoor air pollution have gendered impacts and inadequate policy interventions.
Gender equality gains reversed
Gender equality gains are being reversed as a result of climate impacts. There are greater obstacles to climate adaptation for women and girls, disproportionate economic consequences, and increased unpaid care and domestic work due to the crisis's compounding effects.
Since COVID-19 pandemic broke out, these deeply entrenched gender inequalities have worsened, leaving more women and girls vulnerable to climate risks and less empowered to act on them. The global climate change convention must bring the gender issue to the forefront and to provide a platform to discuss existing challenges and to share success stories from around the world with a view to increasing awareness and sharing experiences and promoting gender sensitive and responsive policies, strategies and actions. Climate change policies can be made more stringent when women are more represented in national parliaments. At the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 66) in March 2022, member states recognised the importance of gender equality, equal participation, and leadership in climate action. The design, funding, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of all climate change policies and programs should also take a gender perspective into account.
Intergovernmental processes such as UNFCCC meetings, Conference of Parties (COPs), and the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWPG), 2014, have been working to advance gender equality and gender responsiveness in climate action. Although India has committed to implementing gender-equitable actions under the Lima GAP, its progress on integrating a gender lens in climate action has lagged behind that on sustainability and human development.
It is ironic that women entrepreneurs are relatively underrepresented in the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) sector, despite the potential they have to unlock women's resilience to climate change. A lack of gender-disaggregated data on climate products and services provided by MSME sectors make it difficult to identify bottlenecks in the development of financially viable businesses addressing women's issues. For achieving the larger target of developing climate change and gender action plans, it is necessary to integrate the existing institutional support and promote greater convergence where appropriate.
India pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2070 at COP26, held in 2021. To achieve this goal, the country must develop unique ideas and maximise its resources. There is still a need for gender-responsive climate financing globally. Data released by Climate Policy Initiative – a global advisory organisation shows that in spite of increased international dialogue about women's importance as stakeholders and consumers of climate finance interventions, less than 2 per cent of climate investment was gender-responsive in 2021. Women in business can play a key role in pushing the agenda for gender-responsive climate action to enhance investments that prioritise environmental, social and governance factors. The just energy transition partnerships between India and G7 members could be a potential opening for promoting women led sectors in designing gender transformative projects. Similarly, the Indo-German Partnership for Green and Sustainable Development that aims to cooperate on multilateral initiatives to support implementation of SDGs and climate action might use the intersectional gender lens to ensure that both men and women from local communities have access to health, healthy ecosystems services and a better standard of living.
It is imperative that civil society and the private sector play a more active role in India's state-level climate plans in order to enhance accountability and implement inclusive climate measures. Women-led development and climate action have already been prioritised by India during its G20 presidency. For India, this is an ideal time to place gender at the centre of climate action policy.
Link to 8th Gender and Economic Policy Discussion Forum
Link to 25th Gender and Economic Policy Discussion Forum
Link to 27th Gender and Economic Policy Discussion Forum
