The Gender-Specific Impact Of Climate Change

Excerpted from the first of a four part series on the gender-specific impact of climate change by Masum Momaya:

Women are particularly affected by climate change because they generally do not have secure, affordable access to and control over land, water, livestock and trees; thus, they are forced to make do with limited resources and alternatives when their subsistence needs and livelihoods are threatened. Elderly women, disabled women, women widows and indigenous women often face the most acute challenges related to climate change whilst having fewer resources to compensate for and adjust to changes.

Water:

As the primary collectors of water in the Global South, women and girls now have to walk or travel farther to obtain water and employ more intensive means to collect and store water. In some cases, girls are likely to not attend school to complete these tasks or perform other chores while their mothers get water or engage in other income-generating activities when existing water-dependent tasks such as farming are threatened. Moreover, in some places, it is dangerous for women and girls to travel far to get water – they are raped and abducted as they walk long distances through conflict-ridden territory, sometimes unaccompanied.

In places like Asia and the Caribbean, women have been faced with either death or difficult rebuilding of lives and homes in the face of severe cyclones, hurricanes, floods and tsunamis. A study of extreme weather between 1981-2002 found that natural disasters kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men. For example, women vastly outnumbered men in tsunami deaths in 2004 and annually, women outnumber men in cyclone deaths in Bangladesh.

Soil & Food:

In addition to the impact of climate change on water, permanent temperature changes have reduced the number and biodiversity of available plants, including for medicinal purposes.  As a large percentage of the world’s farmers, food gatherers and healers, women are often dependent on local ecosystems for health and livelihoods. Rural women alone are responsible for half of the world’s food production and produce between 60-80% of the food in the Global South.

When food is scarce and/or expensive, women and girls are more vulnerable to malnutrition and starvation.For instance, an UNDP study found that rainfall shortages in India resulted in periods of low food consumption, rising food prices and starvation-related deaths of girls. Similarly, during the bread crisis in Egypt between 2007-2008, women and girls compensated for the shortages of bread by working more for paid income outside the home, eating less and spending more time preparing less expensive food from scratch.

Read the complete annotated article here.