Climate Change is not Gender-Neutral
By Liane Schalatek
Women ,who form the majority of the world’s 1.4 billion people still living in abject poverty, are often disproportionally affected by climate change impacts, largely because of gender norms and widespread gender discriminations that deny them income, legal rights, access to resources or political participation, while assigning them the primary care for their families and their livelihoods. This contributes to their marginalization in many societies.
Suffering from gender-based vulnerabilities to climate change, women are more often victims of climate change than men; however, women also possess knowledge of and experiences in capacities to mitigate as well as strategies to cope and adapt, which makes them important “agents of change” in the fight against global warming.
Talking Points for the Public Hearing on “Women and Climate Change” organized by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality of the European Parliament on October 11, 2011
Click here to read Gender and Climate Finance: Double Mainstreaming for Sustainable Development (6 pages, pdf, 488KB)
Interview with Connie Heedegard after the Gender and Climate change hearing at the EU-Parliament in Brussels - 11th October 2001
Liane Schalatek
is the Associate Director of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung North America. Her current work focuses primarily on climate, development and gender issues and their interconnections with special attention to climate change financing.
