How Climate Change Exacerbates Gender Inequality Across the Globe

Among the lesser studied effects of climate change are the social and economic impacts on women. Nitya Rao, professor of gender and development at University of East Anglia has been studying gender and development for decades; with the recent attention on the profound impact that global temperature changes are having on local and national economies, she decided to analyze the impact of climate change on women specifically. She and her team studied data collected from 25 case studies in 11 hot spot countries in Asia and Africa to document how climate change is influencing women’s status—measured by their ability to make strategic decisions about their livelihoods, take agency over their financial situations, and work to improve their social and economic positions, among other things. “What we found is that climate change and environmental stress are common factors that intensify pre-existing disadvantages or gender and developmental inequalities,” she says. That’s especially true in poorer parts of the world, where families depend on agriculture and labor jobs to make money, and where male migration, male-dominated labor markets, and patriarchal institutions already put stresses on families, mostly women, that are struggling to survive. Climate change exacerbates those burdens, Rao found. For example, as warming global temperatures lead to more crop uncertainty—droughts or floods could wipe out a year’s work in a matter of weeks ̵...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change climate change and women Source Type: news