This is an excerpt from Global Climate Justice: Theory and Practice. You can download the book free of charge from E-International Relations.

In this chapter, I focus on the negative consequences of climate change for women’s rights. This chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part, I point out that poorer women in developing countries are one of the social groups most exposed to the effects of climate change. In the second part, I show why climate change affects women’s lives and their rights. Global climate change is a matter in which gender issues intersect with those related to care and social justice. As the European Parliament Resolution of 20 April 2012 reports (Dankelman 2010), the impact of climate change on human beings has gender-differentiated effects. There is evidence that extreme natural phenomena have different consequences on people based on their gender identity. Thus, the impact of climate change on women is not the same as on men.

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Gender discrimination, much like the intersection between race discrimination and other factors, such as poverty or geography, hinders considerably a person’s access to the means and resources they need to face and minimise the effects of climate change on a global level. These effects include natural disasters such as drought, floods and hurricanes. Poverty, along with social, economic and political barriers, make women increasingly unable to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. Thus, environmental crises, which often lead to humanitarian crises, pose a serious question of climate justice. Nevertheless, many governments still ignore the impact of gender inequality and women’s socio-economic disadvantages. Hence, the underlying issue of gender inequality remains a critical challenge for ecofeminists to address. In this chapter, I show that women are one of the social groups most exposed to ‘climate injustice’. The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, I show that poorer women in developing countries are highly susceptible to climate change. The responsibilities these women assume or are forced to assume during natural disasters render them more exposed to the effects of climate change. Second, I illustrate why climate change poses such a threat to women’s lives and how these changes significantly affect their social, political and economic rights. Climate change affects human rights, and the negative consequences of climate change can be seen as violating fundamental rights of women in particular.

1. Women and the Negative Effects of Climate Injustice

Climate change increases the number and intensity of natural disasters such as tropical cyclones, prolonged dry spells, intense rainfall, heatwaves, tornadoes, thunderstorms, severe dust storms, rising sea levels, deforestation and water and environmental pollution. These ecological disasters have dramatic consequences for human populations. The most serious of these consequences include the risk of disease due to an increasing number of pathogenic microorganisms, malnutrition due to the destruction or failure of crops and the forced migration of both people and animals. Statistically, ‘climate refugees’ and the victims of natural disasters are more likely to be women and children than men or adults (Alston and Whittenbury 2013). Women – especially heads of households in rural, less-developed countries – are among those whom ‘climate injustice’ affects most severely. This term relates to the inability of these women to deal with the harmful effects of climate change effectively (Masika 2002; Tuana and Cuomo 2014).

Factors such as a person’s social status, gender, poverty and access to and control over economic resources affect how much climate change impacts their lives. As many studies show (Neumayer and Plümper 2007; Castañeda and Gammage 2011; Swarup 2011; Atkinson and Bruce 2015), since women in developing countries have reduced economic, political and legal power, they are less able to manage the negative effects of climate disasters. In rural areas, women are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they are highly dependent on local resources for their livelihoods. In these countries, women are predominantly in charge of securing clean drinking water, food and fuel for cooking and heating. Gender inequality increases after events, such as extreme drought, in places where it is the responsibility of women and girls to collect water every day, especially when water resources become scarcer. As Stern (2009, 70) maintains, in drought-affected countries, ‘many poor people, but particularly women and girls, will have to spend more time and energy fetching water from further away’.

Several factors explain the differences between women and men in terms of their exposure and vulnerability to risks from climate change. First, gender differences affect a person’s ability to access goods and services. Certain markets and institutions limit women’s access to credit and labour opportunities. As Cuomo (2011) explains, the global gender gap in earnings and productivity is considerable: women earn only 30–80% of what men earn each year on average. According to a World Bank survey carried out in 141 countries, 103 countries impose legal restrictions on women that hamper their economic opportunities (Mishra and Mohapatra 2017, 151). The available data from developing countries indicates that more women work in agriculture and basic crop production than men. More than their male counterparts, these women often reinvest their income into the family, too. Even though women represent half of the agricultural workforce, they only own between 10–20% of the land.

Secondly, unlike men, women face significant challenges in influencing any level of policy or decision-making within their communities. Indeed, women are often underrepresented or completely absent from the institutions that make or negotiate decisions regarding how their society might tackle climate change. Unlike men, women in certain rural areas also lack important financial resources. This economic deprivation not only causes income inequality for women but also renders them less capable of contributing towards the policies and programmes that could impact their lives.

Third, socio-cultural norms often limit women’s knowledge of the information and skills they need to avoid danger, including the ability to swim or climb trees when escaping rising water levels. Likewise, these same norms often impose dress codes on women that limit their mobility in times of danger, as well as their ability to assist small children who cannot swim or run. Climate problems and environmental disasters also significantly impact women’s education, health and migration. Environmental catastrophes reduce education rates considerably: children often drop out of school to help their mothers work in fields, and the strain on resources forces women to work harder to obtain drinking water, food and energy (Stern 2009, 70). Even if these women experience the greatest impacts of environmental disasters, they often lack the information and knowledge needed to act effectively in emergencies. Furthermore, the percentage of illiterate women in the world is much higher than that of men. Since women experience illiteracy at a higher rate on average, they are more likely to lack the information and means of communication to act accordingly in the event of a natural and catastrophic event.

Moreover, social influences make........

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