Gender equality crucial to address climate change

A new study published today highlights the importance of overcoming gender inequality for climate change adaptation and explores future pathways of gender equality for sustainable development. Vulnerability to the impacts of climate change differs on a wide range of factors including socio-economic status, education, ethnicity and gender. As such, building capacity to adapt to climate change urgently requires eradicating inequalities of many sorts, including those in terms of gender. In their new study, an interdisciplinary group of researchers from from Humboldt University in Berlin, IIASA, the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Climate Analytics explored the specific linkages between gender inequality and adaptive capacity to climate change. "Women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, not because there's something inherently vulnerable about women, but because of different social and cultural structures that stand in their way," explains study lead author Marina Andrijevic, a researcher from IRI THESys, Humboldt University and Climate Analytics, Berlin, Germany. "Disempowerment comes in many forms, from the lack of access to financial resources, education, and information, to social norms or expectations that affect, for example, women's mobility. These considerations have to be taken into account when thinking about what challenges to adaptation a society might face." The study used an established Gender Inequality Index of the United Nations Development Programme which measures whether women are disadvantaged in comparison to men in health, education, as well as labour market and political participation.