Climate change soaring women’s domestic burdens
Agro-pastoralist women harvest vegetables in Amudat, Uganda on the Kenyan border, last year. Experts have said women are enduring additional burdens of mitigating effects of climate change.
What you need to know:
- Women are enduring additional burdens of mitigating effects of climate change, a recent forum on GBV in a changing climate revealed.
- Women are taught new adaptation skills, which adds up to their domestic roles of taking care of the home and the children.
- According to United Nations Environment Program, loss of natural resources as a result of climate change exposes more women and girls to GBV.
Women are enduring additional burdens of mitigating effects of climate change, a recent forum on gender-based violence (GBV) in a changing climate revealed.
They are taught new adaptation skills, which adds up to their domestic roles of taking care of the home and the children.
“Women are taught how to use drones but that is not the only work they do. They have to collect firewood and take care of the children,” said gender and vulnerable populations specialist at Peru’s Ministry of Environment, Ms Jessica Huertas during the virtual meeting by International Union for Conservation of Nature.
She said environmental programming should integrate social transformation in which men take up unpaid roles at home. This way, the women will proactively participate in climate change adaptation and mitigation activities with lighter domestic responsibilities.
“We need to move from gender responsive policies to gender transformative policies…this implies starting to shift the way we think that gender is only (about) women,” she said.
“For instance, men suffer from a differentiated impact when there is a migration due to climate change…when they migrate, they don’t go into a space of mental health to fight their depression.”
Leadership roles
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, director Ms Jocelyn Kelly, noted the need to leverage on women and girls’ knowledge on averting climate change disasters that increase their risks to GBV.
“We need to ensure that women and girls have leadership roles in environmental (programming),” she said.
“Women and girls are actually already experts in exactly what we are trying to understand and leveraging on that expertise means we are better at early warning and environmental adaptation, innovation and response.”
According to United Nations Environment Program (Unep), loss of natural resources as a result of climate change exposes more women and girls to GBV. They also become subjects of violence when men lose their breadwinner roles
In its 2019 Gender and Environment Outlook document, the UN agency says families marry off their daughters in exchange for money and property to stave off hunger.
“To prevent gender-based violence, make sure women, men, girls and boys have equitable access to natural resources, credit, education and information and markets,” it recommends.
