Women are Disproportionately Affected by Climate Change According to New Report

The new Gender, Climate, and Environmental Justice in Australia report highlights the disproportionate effects climate change has on women and gender-diverse people.

The report addresses this gap in an Australian context and investigates why gender-diverse leadership is critical to solving key environmental and climate challenges.

The underpinning recommendation of the report is the need to embrace a ‘clean and caring economy’ to tackle the challenging times ahead.

This means shifting our focus from profit and politics to care – for Country, people, and community above all else, to ensure we can weather the uncertainty of a changing climate.

More of this! | @keepitcoolaus

Alarmingly, women are 14 times more likely to perish in a natural disaster and also represent 80% of people displaced by extreme weather.

This is because women are more impacted by structural factors and restrained by structural social-norms, including being disadvantaged economically.

To look at these stats through an Australian lens, Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia, or WELA, researched and released this report.

Gendered Impacts of a Changing Climate

The report unpacks the ‘overlapping forces of patriarchy, colonialism, racism, and unfettered capitalism’, which all have had long-term, systemic impacts on women across every aspect of their public and private lives.

In more tangible terms, the effects of increasing unpaid labor during times of crisis, a rise in gender-based violence post-disaster, and exacerbated health impacts, in particular on pregnant women during heatwaves and bushfires, all contribute to the gender gap.

Even during natural disasters, women are still taking on more unpaid labour | Photo by Anouk Berney

In addition, ongoing financial inequality (AKA the gender pay gap) compounds to make women more vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate.

Within the home, the mental load of sustainability efforts often fall to the women, including minimising water usage, reducing waste, and growing fresh produce to provide affordable, healthy food for the family.

Workplaces are also affected, as the transition to clean energy focuses on male-dominated industries such as fossil fuels and renewable energy.

Whilst these industries receive more funding and attention, care-based and feminised sectors such as child care, aged care, disability care, and social work are left to carry the increased load during disasters, as they’re ‘essential workers’ who serve vulnerable populations.

Gender Diversity = Better Climate Solutions

Whilst women are leading community change, they also need to be in the room where policy decisions are made. The report recognises that ‘when women and gender-diverse people lead or are involved with solutions, they often achieve more effective and equitable outcomes, favouring solutions that are nature-based, relational, locally responsible, and people-focused’.

Aunty Lorraine Williams (left) and Mililma May (right) have been integral to the community-led push to save Binybara/Lee Point in the NT | @rebecca_parker_nt

This extends to politics, where countries with more women implement more robust environmental policies, vote in more environmental legislation, and ratify more environmental treaties. In the corporate sector, when women are in leadership positions, there are significantly fewer environmental lawsuits and higher scores on social and governance performance rankings.

Why are women being overlooked?

These all sound like positive, constructive reasons for our boardrooms and parliaments to be gender equitable. But despite these advantages, women and gender-diverse people are under-represented in politics, policy-making, and industry, including sectors necessary to transition to a clean economy.

According to the Australian Institute, women are underrepresented in seven out of nine of Australia’s parliaments (Jan, 2024)  | @socialestate

The discrepancy is even more significant for First Nations women and women from culturally diverse communities, who, once again, are the most affected by climate change.

The distribution of recognition and funding also impacts this. Less than 1% of global charitable funding goes towards women-led environmental action, and only 36% of scientific research on climate and biodiversity reports are authored by women.

These sectors lead innovation, and if STEM and big business continues to drag its feet on gender diversity and equality, it will filter down to all workplaces. This is despite the overwhelming evidence that workplaces, businesses, and governments all benefit from gender equality when it comes to productivity and profit.

What needs to change?

The report highlights seven recommendations that lay the groundwork for effective environmental and climate outcomes. This starts by acknowledging that gender inequality exists and ensuring a genuinely inclusive process of prioritising women’s needs and solutions in the future. These include:

• Urgently supporting more women and gender-diverse people in leadership positions across various sectors, including government, industry, and not-for-profits
• Recognising the existing gender lens on Australian climate and environmental policy
• Adopt a gender lens when allocating funding to climate and environmental initiatives from various sources, including the government, industry, and the NFP sector to ensure effectiveness and fairness
• Create a Gender, Climate, and Environment Strategy at state and federal government levels to establish measures for evaluating progress and implementing gender action plans
• Increase awareness of the influence of gender in disaster preparedness and response, including research into the impact and response, and funding programs to support emergency services and communities in understanding the links

The critical recommendation that underpins all of this is the cultural understanding that we need to centre a ‘clean and caring economy’ to address the complex issues of the coming decades. This means placing care – not profit, GDP or politics – at the heart of policy-making to ensure we care for both people and the planet.

The full report is available online.

Feature image thanks to @mydreamadventure