Rethink Gender Issues to Better Tackle Climate Change

Mar 8, 2021 | Jacqueline Lau, Pip Cohen, and Sarah Lawless
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Gender influences how people experience and respond to climate change. This is particularly evident in developing nations where women and men adapt to climatic shocks differently. Women work harder and longer, in poorer conditions, while men are more likely to migrate to find work that’s often insecure and unreliable. In an article published recently in Nature Climate Change, we reviewed the literature on climate change and gender in low and middle-income countries from the last six years. And we discovered many unhelpful assumptions still plaguing climate change policy and research. These assumptions hinder the pursuit of gender equality. They do this by misdiagnosing the causes of inequality and propping up ineffective strategies that seem like good ideas.