On International Women’s Day, a call out of unjust impacts of climate change on women and a call for women’s empowerment
Washington, DC - On March 8, International Women’s Day, the Center for Strategic International Studies Global Food and Water Security Program hosted an event that pointed a spotlight on the disproportionate and unjust impacts of climate change on rural women in agriculture. At the event “The Unjust Climate: Bridging the Gap for Women in Agriculture”, high-level speakers from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United States government weighed in on key findings from the groundbreaking report “The unjust climate. Measuring the impact of climate change on the poor, women, and youth” and their implications for policymaking and investments.
Barriers to climate-adaptation
In opening remarks, Lauren Phillips, Deputy Director of FAO’s Rural Transformation and Gender Equity Division, underscored the urgent need for increased actions to mitigate the impact of climate change that are include the most vulnerable groups, including women, the poor and the elderly. Rural women’s vulnerabilities, she said, are distinct. Addressing these challenges requires gender responsive and transformative actions to empower rural populations to engage in climate-adaptive measures.
Ms. Phillips highlighted that for rural women, barriers such as lack of access to resources, services and employment opportunities negatively impacttheircapacity to adapt to and cope with climate change. For example, discriminatory norms and policies place a disproportionate burden on women for care and domestic responsibilities, limit their rights to land, prevent them from making decisions over their labour and hamper their access to information, finance, technology and other essential services. She emphasized, “What's really important is to design investments and to increase the amount of money that's going towards projects which not only address these kinds of asset and resource gaps, but also try to transform social norms or empower women so that they have more agency to make decisions for their family.”
New data on the impacts of climate change on rural women
Until now, there has been little comparative, multi-country and multi-region evidence to understand how exposure to weather shocks and climate change affects the drivers of rural transformation and adaptive actions across different segments of rural societies.Nicholas Sitko, Senior Economist and lead author of “The unjust climate,” highlighted direct impacts of climate change, like agricultural and labor productivity as well as indirect impacts, like prices and shifting household infrastructure. He pointed to key data from the report, such as the finding that average, female-headed households lose 8 percent more of their income due to heat stress and 3 percent more due to floods compared to male-headed households. This translates to a per capita reduction of $83 due to heat stress and $35 due to floods, totaling $37 billion and $16 billion respectively across all low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
In the keynote remarks, USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Smallcharacterized “The unjust climate” report as “somber” and elaborated that it is“making us look at truths” regarding inequalities in rural communities. Deputy Secretary Torres Small pointed to widening disparities and the disproportionate effects of climate change on female-headed households as challenges that need to be addressed. Even more disturbing, she said,is the scant attention that women in agriculture who are faced with the impacts of climate change receive in government policies around the world. Focusing on the future, Torres Small then issued a call for “hope”, turning the challenges presented in “The unjust climate” into opportunities to invest in women farmers with intentionality and to increase income equitably. She recognized that women must be front and center when creating new markets and new opportunities, building on their stewardship, innovation, and productivity. Lastly, she announced that the U.S. governmentis working with the United Nations to sponsorthe International Year of the Women Farmer in 2026 to close gender gaps and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Caitlin Walsh, Director of the CSIS Global Food and Water Security program moderated the panel discussion, where Ann Vaughan, Assistant Administrator for USAID Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security and Christina Chan, Senior Advisor to the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate discussed with Lauren Phillips the issues of access to capital for female farmers, the need for locally led adaptation, andthe importance of systemic behavioral change. Again, it was underscored during the discussion that deliberate actions are needed to provide access to women to solutions and training.
Gender equality to create climate-resilience
The report projects that if the average temperatures were to increase by just 1°C, women farmers in LMICs would face a staggering 34% greater loss in their total incomes compared to men. Given the existing gaps in agricultural productivity and wages, if not addressed, climate change will widen these gaps further. The study also finds that rural women and their climate vulnerabilities receive scant attention in national climate policies and investments. Of the more than 4000 climate actions proposed in 24 countries, a meager 6 percent mention women.
Projects and policies which focus on empowerment can significantly improve resilience to climatic and other shocks. FAO estimates that empowering projects could lead to an additional 235million families having higher resilience to such shocks. In closing remarks, FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero asserted, “Addressing the challenges outlined in this report requires more than just acknowledging their existence. It demands concerted action at the local, national, and global levels. If we are serious about climate justice, we cannot afford to ignore the voices of rural women or sideline their experiences in policymaking and decision-making processes.”
To achieve resilient, sustainable, efficient and inclusive agrifood systems, FAO is coordinating with other UN agencies on the ground in various countries to implement projects that provide better training and capacity building for women, as well as addressing underlying social norms through approaches which work with both women and men to build greater gender equality. These projects aim to help increase women’s agency and participation in agrifood systems and value chains, as well as gain access to technologies, assets and resources that can address the gaps previously mentioned.
Overcoming gender inequality is key in climate-resilient development. Women’s empowerment, through capacity building, training women, farmer business schools, and value chain projects, can provide support for women and have a significant impact on the resilience of rural households to climate related shocks.
Additional resources:
REPORT: The Unjust Climate - Full Report