Women and climate change

While nobody can escape the impacts of climate change, certain social groups experience greater loss of resources and greater impacts to their livelihoods and cultural identity than others. Mountain women across different socioeconomic categories are disproportionately affected because of structural inequalities in the distribution of rights, assets, resources, and power such as access to education, information, technology, decision-making processes and property rights.

Gender-based cultural constraints often prevent women participating in decision-making and taking up roles in management committees, policy development and governance. To be able to assume these roles, women need opportunities and space to build their capacity, but also strong support from institutions and stakeholders across all sectors, including agriculture, business management, technology and innovation. This is where the solutions play an important role. 

Women at the centre

The solutions acknowledge that empowering women and other marginalized groups is vital to achieving the goal of building resilient mountain communities in the face of climate change.  

The solutions work towards a gender-transformative approach, which understands the differential needs of men and women and considers the drivers that lead to the marginalization of women. These drivers vary according to their race, ethnicity, caste and ability. The gender-transformative approach works simultaneously at many levels, acknowledging that a change at the individual level is only sustainable with positive change at the household, community and national levels, including national policymaking.

How to assure empowerment?

Empowerment needs long-term commitment to societal transformative change that addresses the drivers of the marginalization. The solutions create meaningful impact when the root causes of marginalization are considered and adopted by all parties at different levels. The 10 solutions presented on this website have shown improvements in livelihoods, as well as empowerment and demarginalization of women. A combination of solutions can be used to increase gender equality, inclusivity and the resilience of mountain communities.