Gendered Impacts of Climate Change and Policy Levers to Address Them

Key Points

• The effects of climate change magnify existing inequalities at the national, subnational, and intrahousehold levels, and those who are most affected are often those who contribute the least to the underlying drivers of climate change.
• Women’s adaptive capacity is constrained by economic gaps in, for example, labor force participation and asset endowments. The interplay of these gaps with prevailing gender norms determines a woman’s ability to adapt to the effects of climate change.
• Interventions to make women more resilient to climate change range from bridging information gaps to addressing disparities in social and physical capital through collectives and cash and asset transfers.
• Increasing women’s involvement at all levels of governance has the potential to increase climate‑sensitive policymaking and ensures that barriers faced disproportionately by women are at the center of adaptation and mitigation discussions.