‘Climate Change is Not Gender Neutral’

Climate Change is Not Gender Neutral

Energy action goes hand in hand with gender equality – which is why female climate change representatives as speakers, panellists and thought leaders at COP27 is imperative, writes Rabina Khan 

As the media focuses on laying out the red carpet for world leaders from Europe and America attending the COP27 UN climate change summit, it fundamentally fails to report on how climate change disproportionately affects people of colour and women.  

The heads of states gathered at the event should be reminded that the term ‘net zero’ was coined by a group of 30 women who met in Scotland in 2013. These included Farhana Yamin, a research fellow at Chatham House; the late Tessa Tenant, a green financier pioneer; and Rachel Kyte, a member member of the UN secretary-general’s high-level advisory group on climate action.

The group met because it felt that the Copenhagen summit in 2009 had failed to establish clear targets for nations to deliver. Net zero subsequently evolved into laws across nations, fundamentally influencing businesses, the economy and climate change behaviour. Nevertheless, it is a handful of men who take the credit.   

Mia Mottley is the only woman of colour world leader listed among those attending this year’s summit.

Mottley is the first female Prime Minister of one of the smallest and most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, Barbados. She received widespread recognition at last year’s event because of her common-sense approach to climate change and her call to make international financial systems work for those most affected by the crisis. She called out Western nations for becoming richer yet being responsible for most of the world’s climate crises at the cost of poorer nations becoming the victims.

Mottley has pushed Barbados to develop a bold plan to phase out fossil fuels by 2030.

The annual climate change summit needs more women like her. So where are they?

Gender inequality, combined with the climate crisis, threatens the health, income, family life, safety and financial security of women and girls around the world. And so their voices are critical – they are the potential change-makers at all levels of climate action and decision-making.   

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Social, economic and cultural factors make women more vulnerable to the damaging effects of climate change. A UN report found that 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty are women – making them more dependent on basic food, income and access to natural resources like water. But gender inequality in climate change means that women are less likely to be in positions of power.  

It is therefore grim that so many men will preside over decisions impacting on climate change inequalities that disproportionately affect so many women. Negotiations are driven by governments of nations that adhere to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Given the low representation of women in senior political positions globally, there will of course be gender inequality at the decision-making table of all COP summits.   

But under-representation doesn’t end in the political sphere. Those submitting scientific, geological, and environmental reports are also predominantly men. 

Although UN Women is pushing the agenda for women at all climate change discussion and decision-making tables, the focus on negotiations means their part continues to be insignificant. Moreover, research conducted last year showed that environmental scientists perceived their male and female peers differently, with male environmental scientists rating statements by female scientists as more ‘dramatic’ and ‘biased’. It is these biases that may prevent some female scientists from avoiding advocacy or media appearances.  

We should be encouraging and embracing the largely untapped talent and contributions of women in geosciences and climate change discussions, advocates, campaigners and thought leaders. Without their input, it will never be possible to create a gender-equal world, especially when tackling issues in countries that affect women more than men.  

Report after report with statistics of the lived realities of girls and women in the face of climate catastrophe from organisations on the frontline of climate change provides the evidence that gender equality supports economic growth but not all economic growth supports gender equality.

The need to transform world economies is failing because our current economic model concentrates wealth at the top of the economy resulting in severe economic inequality leaving the poorest and most vulnerable women and girls behind.