The Unjust Climate: Bridging the Gap for Women in Agriculture

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a report titled "The Unjust Climate: Measuring the Impact of Climate Change on the Poor, Women, and Youth." The report demonstrated how climate stressors widened the income gap among rural people along the lines of class, gender, and age. By combining socioeconomic data from over 950 million rural people across 24 countries with over 70 years of climate data, the report revealed how climate change adversely impacted female-headed households' livelihoods to a greater degree than male-headed households.

Despite the pronounced and disproportionate impacts of climate change on women, these issues remained barely visible in national climate policies and associated climate financing at that time. There was an urgent need to increase awareness of these disparate climate impacts and to direct additional resources towards women's empowerment and women farmers' resilience.

The CSIS Global Food and Water Security Program held a discussion on Friday, March 8 at 11:00 AM EST to address the unequal impacts of climate change on rural women in agriculture and the critical investments needed to address these disparities. CSIS was honored to welcome Deputy Director Lauren Phillips and Senior Economist Nicholas Sitko from FAO’s Rural Transformation and Gender Equality for opening remarks, followed by keynote remarks from USDA's Xochitl Torres Small. The event also featured a panel discussion between USAID's Ann Vaughan, U.S. Department of State's Christina Chan, and Lauren Phillips, with concluding remarks from FAO’s Chief Economist Máximo Torero.