Advancing Gender Equality through Climate Action

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Women and girls are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change and pay a higher price.
Those who have contributed least to global emissions are hit hardest; developing economies and small island states face more frequent climate-linked disasters, rising temperatures, and sea levels.
Climate change disproportionately burdens the most marginalized, including women and girls.

Gender inequality increases initial vulnerability to climate impacts and worsens outcomes after shocks.
Pathways linking inequality to vulnerability:
- Reduced access to education and employment opportunities limits adaptation capacity.
- Cultural barriers, economic stress, and gender norms increase risks of early marriage and restrict economic participation.
- Unequal access to land and credit constrains resilience-building and adaptation.
- Agricultural and financial institutions underinvest in services and products for crops and producers predominantly tended by women.
- Social norms and unequal rescue/treatment increase female mortality and exposure to harm during disasters.
- Post-disaster risks include food shortages, poor hygiene, increased gender-based violence, and transactional sex prompted by displacement and poverty.

"200 million adolescent girls in the world’s poorest communities."
"700 million women today who married before the age of 18."
"In Malawi alone, it is estimated that more than 1.5 million girls marry early as a direct result of climate change."
"Average female participation in the workforce is 20 percentage points lower than their male counterparts."
"Women play a major role in the agricultural sector yet hold less than 15 percent of the world’s land."
"In Africa, four in five women lack access to an account at a formal financial institution."
The UK’s climate finance commitment: "£11.6 billion international climate finance investment" to "integrate gender-responsive and inclusive approaches into the design, delivery, and assessment of our programs over the next five years."
UK-funded educational recovery example: "326,000 girls who returned to school, thanks to UK funding, after cyclones Idai and Kenneth in southern Africa."

COP26 goals: cutting emissions, getting finance flowing, fostering collaborative action, and galvanizing support for front-line countries and communities.
COP26 presidency program includes a day dedicated to advancing gender equality and meaningful participation by women and girls in climate action.
Adapt Now (Global Commission on Adaptation, cochaired by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva) highlights risks when adaptation ignores gender inequalities.
UK joined the Feminist Action for Climate Justice Coalition at the Generation Equality Forum and affirmed commitments to champion leadership by women and girls, education, and climate action decision-making.
The Gender Action Plan of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provides objectives and principles for gender-responsive climate policy, finance, and action.

Foreground gender equality in climate action and inclusive, resilient recovery from COVID-19.
Ensure climate finance is gender-responsive and empowers women’s participation in a transition to an inclusive, green economy, with front-line female access to finance.
Central ministries of finance and planning should:
- Integrate climate risks and differentiated impacts on women into planning procedures.
- Target budgetary spending to education and paid employment opportunities for women.
- Direct social protection programs to enhance benefits for women, while supporting food security and climate-resilient investments.
Use the principles of the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan to inform policymaking and program design.
Support programs that increase women’s access to land, credit, climate services, seeds, and insurance tailored to crops predominantly tended by women.

Targeted support can decrease vulnerability on the front line, secure development gains, and advance gender equality.
Example pathway for change:
- Adolescent girls retain access to education instead of being forced out to collect water or being married early.
- Education leads to skills, stable work, financial independence, increased access to land and credit, and diversified, climate-sensitive livelihoods.
- Community-level initiatives (example: cooperative "CocoaWomen") enable idea-sharing, best practices, and mutual support.
- Collective action and financing (e.g., UK-funded recovery after cyclones) can result in concrete returns, such as "326,000 girls who returned to school" after disaster.

COP26 is presented as a moment for countries and institutions to step up commitments to advance gender equality through climate action and to ensure women’s and girls’ voices are heard and supported.
Policymakers and decision-makers are urged to target approaches, programs, and policies that directly address gendered impacts of climate change to rewrite outcomes for women and girls.

Advancing Gender Equality through Climate Action — Anne-Marie Trevelyan, F&D Magazine, September 2021.