There are two incredible phenomena taking place in the world. The rise of global warming, and the rise of women and girls. The link between these two phenomena is often overlooked. However, environmentalists, like Katharine Wilkinson have found that making gender equality a reality may just be a solution for climate change.
Gender and Agricultural Specialist at Georgetown University, Patricia Biermayr-Jenzano believes that the world simply cannot expect to bypass the brutal actualities of climate change without considering the issue through a gender lens. The United Nations purports that sustainable development requires actions on three fronts, social, economic, and environmental. Interestingly enough, women are central to the progression of each of these areas. And so, it is almost impossible to expect global advancement without empowering women and providing the opportunities for women to peacefully exist in and contribute to diverse areas like those which tackle environmental challenges, like climate change.
Climate change is said to impact everyone, but not equally. Women face higher risks and bear greater burdens from the impacts of climate change in situations of poverty and by the inability access to opportunities due to existing gender roles. The act of empowering women and girls in developing countries is ranked second among seventy-six solutions for curbing global warming, according to a report by the climate research organization, Project Drawdown. So, I guess the question that you may be asking yourself right now is, “How really does empowering women to help us to tackle Climate Change?”
I’m glad you asked.
About 51% of the world’s population are women or girls. This percentage takes on added importance when we consider that just about 100% of the world’s population is needed to tackle climate change. According to the United Nations, women remain underrepresented in areas such as politics. This manifests as women being disproportionately excluded from consulting on issues that affect them, like climate change. This can be changed.
Empowering women looks like the promotion of a woman’s sense of self-worth, her ability to make her own decisions, and to influence social change. This is done in five main ways. Advocacy, Education, Employment, Investment, and Mentorship.
Earthday.org upholds that access to education, family planning, and birth control gives women the opportunity to choose if or how they want to go about having their families. Statistics show that women with this access tend to have fewer children and have them later in life. A report by the Australian Community of Science submits that this relieves stress on ecosystems by allowing the world’s resources to recover from overuse without compromising local food access. However, I want to take care to install that women’s contribution to the globe, span well beyond any discussion relating to their reproductive systems.
Women are crucial to the building and maintaining of climate-resilient communities. In fact, communities, where women are involved in planning and creating strategies, tend to be more resilient. According to the United Nations, this is because women tend to share more information, and are more likely to adapt to environmental changes than men. And so, for instance, women who own land are said to farm smarter than their male counterparts, simply because they devote their work to best-practice as opposed to economic competition according to Marine Biologist and Conversation Strategist, Dr. Ayana Johnson of the Yale Program on Climate Change. In a forum entitled, “Climate Crisis”, she also asserted that more women in the realm of Environmental Sciences mean that there will be more voices to talk about climate change and the nuances of implementing solutions.
As we are speaking about solutions. Right now, women account for about 43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries. When provided with the same access and resources as men, research shows, that women increase these yields by about 25%. This not only increases the world’s agricultural output by about 2.5-4% but also contributes to the reduction of world hunger by about 12-17%. This impacts climate change, firstly, by reducing poverty, therefore enabling persons to adapt to the changes in the climate and, secondly, by providing the resources that are more needed to contribute to sustainability.
The UNFCCC Secretariat also published that women are usually first-responders in community responses to natural disasters, leaders in disaster risk reduction, and contribute to post recovery by addressing the early recovery needs of their families and strengthening community building. But beyond this, women tend to advocate more on the issue of climate change, live more eco-friendly lives, adapt easier to economic failure, invest better and leave a smaller carbon footprint.
This does not insinuate that the act of ‘saving the planet’ is a woman’s job. Still, the point is well made that taking action to make gender equality a reality through the empowerment of women yields undeniable returns in environmental conservation, poverty alleviation, social policy, and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. By approaching climate change, and I make bold to say, all other environmental issues through a gender lens, not only are women’s rights addressed by the quality and quantity of human resources, but all issues at the forefront of the globe are also addressed.
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