How climate action and gender equality are linked in the pursuit of justice

While climate change affects everyone, existing gender inequalities often mean it has a disproportionate impact on women
Climate change and gender equality are everyone’s business, and we can do much more to achieve these equally necessary and mutually reinforcing goals

Stephen Minas

Published: 9:15am, 21 May 2021

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The movements for gender equality and climate action are two of the great contemporary struggles for progress. The changes they both demand are long overdue. What is less often acknowledged is that they are also closely linked.

While climate change affects everyone, it has a disproportionate impact on women. Existing gender inequalities are often to blame. For example, women on average face a higher risk of energy poverty than men because of lower average incomes, with lower financial capacity to switch to cleaner energy options.

With less access to land ownership in many parts of the world, women are more exposed to the economic disruptions of climate change. Agriculture is one example. In sub-Saharan Africa, women have accounted for around half of the agricultural workforce while owning or managing less than a fifth of the land. There is also research suggesting women are more likely than men to die in natural disasters.

Despite mounting evidence of disproportionate impacts, women remain under-represented in many of the rooms where key climate decisions are made. In 2015, just 12 per cent of the world’s environment ministers were women.

The flip side to dire statistics such as these is that empowering women is also a massive opportunity to accelerate the climate transition. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted in 2018, gender equality is a climate “co-benefit” that can help enable “rapid and transformational change”.

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Studies cited by the European Capacity Building Initiative indicate countries with more women in parliament are “more likely to approve environmental agreements” and have stronger climate policies. That greater gender equality tends to correlate to lower per capita carbon dioxide emissions.

It is a similar story for business. A recent study of 11,700 companies found that firms in which women accounted for at least 30 per cent of board members performed better than their peers on both environmental reporting and climate governance. Sixteen per cent of companies are in this category, up from a lamentable 2 per cent in 2009.

The study concluded that “gender diversity in workforce is a vital prerequisite to drive innovations for clean energy transition and implement strategies for timely climate action”.

International cooperation has begun to address the demands for gender-responsive climate action. The Paris Agreement urges nations to promote gender equality and empowerment of women. In 2019, at their last meeting before the pandemic, the parties to the UN Climate Convention adopted an enhanced gender action plan.

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The plan seeks to promote women’s leadership and participation at international and national levels. At the international level, this means achieving the “full, equal and meaningful participation of women” in the UN climate process. At the national level, measures include engaging women’s groups and gender institutions in climate policy development and implementation.

A recent UN review of updated national climate plans found that the share of countries referring to gender had significantly increased. Nevertheless, there is much more to be done across all areas of the climate response.

Consider technology, which is central to the practical business of tackling climate change. When it comes to designing technology, women have too often been ignored. Sometimes, the results have been deadly.

The first crash test dummies were based on the average male, which left women as “out of position” drivers in the resulting models. Even in recent years, women involved in car crashes have been 17 per cent more likely than men to die and up to 47 per cent more likely to suffer serious injury.

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Ignoring women in this way can also harm the climate. Take the energy consumption of buildings, responsible for more than 30 per cent of global carbon emissions. Heating and cooling are major causes of these emissions.

However, the standard for office temperatures was developed based on the average metabolic resting rate of men. Recent research indicates this standard overestimated the female metabolic rate by up to 35 per cent. The conclusion is that accurately calculating thermal demand for all building occupants can result in real energy savings.

Climate technologies can and should be made more gender-responsive, but there are obstacles. These include lower participation by women in decision-making processes, less access to finance for new enterprises and, in many parts of the world, less access to formal education.

As the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) guidebook for gender-responsive technology planning recommends, there are many practical steps that can help overcome these obstacles.

These include taking stock of any relevant gender-related international and national legal commitments, ensuring equal participation by women in stakeholder consultations and evaluating options according to their potential to contribute to gender equality alongside environmental and economic goals.

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This potential can be measured by multiple indicators, such as the ability of clean tech to reduce drudgery that disproportionately burdens women, such as collecting water or fuel.

Recognising this, the Paris Agreement’s technology framework calls for the promotion of “gender-responsive technologies for mitigation and adaptation”. The UN’s Technology Executive Committee, which advises the parties to the Climate Convention and Paris Agreement on technology issues, is working on bringing gender considerations into the mainstream in its activities.

Last year, for the first time, the committee appointed gender focal points. Two women – one from a developing country and one from a developed country, and both experts in climate technology – are now working to champion gender responsiveness in this field.

The gender focal points have flagged opportunities to integrate gender in the committee’s work plan and have convened other UN climate bodies to share experiences and identify opportunities for progress. The committee has also started to work with the CTCN, which provides technical assistance to developing countries on gender and technology.

Ultimately, these are small, long overdue steps. However, there is growing momentum for climate measures that reduce systemic gender inequalities instead of reproducing them.

Climate progress is everybody’s business, and so is gender equality. We can all do much more to achieve these equally necessary and mutually reinforcing goals.

Dr Stephen Minas is associate professor at Peking University’s School of Transnational Law and chair of the UN’s Technology Executive Committee