Summary
Those who are most affected by climate change, including women, girls, and marginalized communities, must be involved in designing and implementing climate responses to not only ensure equitable outcomes but also workable solutions. Women's leadership and decision-making here do both. Women's unique experience managing resources and their knowledge of local ecosystems contribute to more effective climate policies, resource governance, and even increased agricultural productivity in the global South. At the corporate and governance level, Women in leadership positions pass laws and create policies that protect the environment.
Women's Representation and Leadership in Climate Action
- Increasing women's representation in national parliaments leads to the adoption of more stringent climate change policies and lower emissions.
- Women's participation in natural resource management is associated with better resource governance and conservation outcomes.
- Women's leadership in the workplace is linked to increased transparency around climate impact, with higher percentages of women on corporate boards positively correlated with the disclosure of carbon emissions information.
Women's Access to Resources and Economic Opportunities
- Expanding women's access to productive resources can increase agricultural production and food security while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
- If all women smallholders received equal access to productive resources, their farm yields would rise by 20 to 30%, and 100 to 150 million people would no longer go hungry.
- Increasing farm yields can reduce the pressure to deforest more land, thereby reducing additional emissions.
- Transitioning away from extractivist practices and fossil fuel economies poses an opportunity to create new jobs and reskill women workers.
- Increasing investment in the care sector is an effective way to shift focus towards collective well-being and strengthen economies without increasing emissions.
Integrating Gender Equality in Climate Solutions
- Putting gender equality at the center of climate change solutions means integrating diverse gender perspectives across holistic and enduring climate, environmental, and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes.
- Climate solutions must improve and invest in gender-specific statistics and data, strengthen and enforce land rights, and promote women-led and women-focused sustainable solutions, particularly indigenous and grassroots nature-based solutions, resource management, and food production activities.
- Climate solutions must take a gender-responsive approach to financing, ensuring that women-led actions are sufficiently and equitably funded to achieve a just, green transition.
Explainer: Why women need to be at the heart of climate action | UN Women – Headquarters
Those who are most affected by climate change today–women, girls and marginalised communities–must be involved in the design and implementation of climate response actions to ensure the equal sharing of benefits.
