Climate Change: Uneven Impact?
- Hindu College Gazette Web Team
- Jul 11
- 8 min read
Introduction
Vanessa Nakate, the Ugandan Climate Change Activist once said, “This is not just about the environment, it's about the community, it's about jobs, it's about justice.” Climate change activist Greta Thunberg once said, “The climate crisis has already been solved. We already have the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.”. Climate change is one of the most serious and detrimental issues in the 21st century. The resources of the Earth have a big question mark on them, based on how long they will remain for future generations to survive and thrive later on. In understanding and calculating the resources in the world, we often forget the fact that those resources also affect the climate. The climate is something which affects everyone, but the big question about this is the fact that whether this sudden change in climate is actually equally affecting people or not, or more specifically whether it is affecting genders equally or not. Climate change is something that people assume is gender neutral, for it impacts all human beings; however, it affects women more than men when we put it in comparison. Through this piece, I will try to talk about how climate change affects genders unevenly while explaining it with a case study.
Plight of Women Due to Climate Change
Women are predominantly considered caretakers in many societies and nations, whether developing or advanced. They often rely on others for support. Climate change has a tremendous impact on women carers, especially when it comes to providing essential needs like food, fuel, and shelter. The social, economic, and political hurdles they face limit their autonomy and ability to manage. In developing countries where agriculture and tribal lifestyles are prevalent, women's reliance on natural resources increases their vulnerability, which puts them at a higher risk as climate change threatens their fundamental means of survival. Many women in these regions, responsible for securing vital resources like water and food, face difficulties due to the dire/devastating effects of climate change. According to Asako Okai from the United Nations Development Programme, women and children are 14 times more likely to perish than men during weather-related disasters. This disparity is present largely due to limited access to information, restricted decision-making power, and fewer available resources for the vulnerable groups, leading to increased displacement and fatalities among women in the face of climate-related disasters. As women are forced to travel farther from their homes in search of essential resources, they become increasingly susceptible to gender-based violence; for instance, in countries like Bangladesh, Kenya, and India, child marriage remains a prevalent issue where families marry off daughters at a young age to secure dowries in the aftermath of climate disasters, like how after the 2007 cyclone Sidr in Banglades, 62% of the child marriages took place in the next 12 months after the cyclone had taken place. Furthermore, the impact of climate change might also disrupt girls' education, requiring them to stay at home to handle household chores, resulting in lost lessons and educational opportunities. This global concern has had a significant impact on education, preventing around 37.5 million pupils (according to the World Bank Blogs written by Uraidah Hassani), primarily females, from receiving a proper education. Furthermore, climate change causes family relocations, which obstruct education repeatedly over time.
Social-Economic Aspects of Climate Change
When climate change occurs, men frequently relocate, typically from rural to urban areas, in search of better job opportunities and future prospects. Men often do jobs which get shut down or impossible to work in conditions due to change of climate and for that they have to find new employment in new sectors and advance with new skills, for that they have to relocate to far away places just for a basic meagre salary for their family. This migration keeps women in their homes, which makes women feel stuck while men advance, a situation influenced by social constructs. The patriarchal structure of society leads to men thriving even during challenging times, while women remain largely unrecognised. Climate change also impacts women’s access to essential water facilities and sanitation, increasing health risks for menstruating women who face a higher likelihood of illness and inadequate healthcare due to limited resources. Furthermore, other climate change effects, such as air pollution and severe heat, contribute to reproductive difficulties, including premature deliveries, lower birth weight, and illnesses such as gestational diabetes, like how a research done by MSI Reproductive Choices in 2011 talks about how 11.5 million in 26 countries have had their access to contraception blocked due to climate change displacement. Climate change can have an unfavourable effect on menopausal experiences as well, and it can also increase prenatal stress, which culminates in the accumulation of heavy metals in breast milk. Women, both working and non-working (non-working here would mean not working in a monetary sense, women working without getting money, also help and are a part of the many processes in the society), who are self-sufficient, these obstacles persist, as they frequently face challenging job conditions, occupational hazards (both inside and outdoors), elevated levels of psychological and emotional stress, and higher mortality rates than men.
Wildfires, such as those in California and the fires in Canada from 2020, have caused New York City to be engulfed in harmful, polluted haze, which has disproportionately affected women. Even during pregnancy, a woman's respiratory rate increases, implying that exposure to higher pollution levels can result in inhaling more harmful substances compared to when she is not pregnant. Research conducted by Stanford and Harvard Universities indicates that pollution heightens risks for pregnant women, linking it to numerous health issues, including hypertensive disorders, postpartum depression, and placental abruption, among others.
Case Study: Botswana 2008, Economic Rise but Environmental Degradation
To further explain this issue, I will also explain and talk about a case study conducted by Kulthoum Omari in 2008 in Botswana where he talked about the Gendered Impact of Climate Change on the people of Botswana. After Botswana’s independence, the country had amazing growth in the economy majorly because of their rich diamond resources. Although their economy increased and reached new heights, it came at a huge environmental cost. The dark side of the economic impact was the change in the environment of Botswana which became worse with increasing urbanisation, population , and economic activity. Due to the new mining for diamond resources and even the other industries flourishing and increase in agriculture in the country, it has caused a strain on the water resources of the country. Pollution of those existing water resources due to these industries either by polluting them or overusing them is a huge risk to the people. Land Degradation is also occurring due to overgrazing of livestock and even deforestation due to increased use of fuelwood and clearing the land for agriculture as well. In light of this information, the women of Botswana are leading a much more difficult life in comparison to men. Due to the water scarcity in the country, women are traditionally considered to be the people who bring water to their households for numerous purposes such as bathing, cleaning, cooking etc. Women have to generally travel longer distances to acquire water for their families. The same goes for fuelwood collection which is the same problem because of deforestation, desertification and even land degradation. Women have to generally travel many kilometres to acquire fuelwood to cook food for their families. Since there is land degradation and even loss of water resources, agriculture becomes a problem as well.
Due to these problems either people try their best to find better resources but are unable to, or resort to unsafe, problematic and compromised solutions. As water scarcity is an issue women have to resort to unclean and dirty water which causes diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera and even hepatitis as well. They also are victims of vector-borne diseases as increased temperatures cause an expansion of malaria carrying mosquitoes which increases malaria and later on increases the burden of caregiving mothers. Instead of the use of fuelwood, they resort to more harmful fuels such as coal and dung, which releases toxic smoke harming the environment and even harming the mothers cooking food and her family living in the house as well.
Economics of Climate Change by Capitalist Institutions
While talking about climate change we also have to talk about the economic inequality of climate change all over the world and how it is affecting the marginalised classes as well. In a society where inventors and engineers like Elon Musk are making initiatives and he is popularly called as the Green-Tony Stark of the world, this identity he has been given is a hoax and is a sort of label which can be now considered as a lie. His great inventions such as Tesla cars where he tries to reduce consumption of fossil fuels and use green energies and forces people to buy those technologies for themselves, in the end Musk himself goes to hundreds of different places in different countries in his own personal private jet, and even his supporting of rightwing political parties and other institutions by helping them secure the major corporations and their ambitions, caused to have a huge problematic strain on the environment as their focus is on collection fossil fuels and gas for corporations and pushing new expensive technologies on the marginalised working communities to make up for it without bearing the brunt for it themselves. Capitalist institutions and people like Jeff Bezos who own huge companies like Amazon which emitted 70.74 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022 which was roughly 1.1% of the country’s emission in the US. So in saying this one other reason for why the lower classes and the marginalised communities are having this issue of climate change and especially women as well is because huge corporations are not making the world a better place and what is worse is that politicians in their respective countries are not doing anything to make it a better, clear and net-zero carbon emission place as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion, climate change itself is a very problematic global issue causing major destruction to the world. It is harming all humans and organisms, and entities on Earth. Still, women in both urban and rural areas are the worst sufferers of climate change because it has impacts on their health, the social and economic construct and just fundamental human rights and resources to survive are also in danger. In light of this we can say that we have to blame the big corporations, industries, capitalist institutions, political parties and even other people as well, we also have to at the most basic level have to take the blame for it is our mistakes and our shortcomings to not take better decisions to solve the climate crisis, in doing so we also have to blame those institutions and make greener and simpler solutions for ourselves so that we can have a much better earth to live in for us and our future generations as well.
By Yashowardhan Chaudhary
Yashowardhan Chaudhary is a second-year student of B.A Program (English and Economics) at Hindu College, University of Delhi. He is interested in writing about Culture Studies, Politics and Intersecting Identities.
Instagram: yasho/यशो
Email-ID: yashowardhanchaudhary@gmail.com
References
Mary Halton, “Climate change 'impacts women more than men'”, BBC, 8th March 2018. Article Link
Techno Serve, “5 Ways Climate Change Disproportionately Impacts Women”, 5th November, 2024. Article Link
United Nations Climate Change, “Why Climate Change Impacts Women Differently Than Men”, 10th June 2022. Article Link
Matthias Berninger, “Climate change impacts women more. We must legislate to protect their health”, World Economics Forum, 16th January 2024. Article Link
Joe McCarthy, “Understanding Why Climate Change Impacts Women More Than Men”, Global Citizen, 6th March 2020. Article Link
Patrick Boyle, “Climate change hurts women more”, AAMC, 6th June 2024. Article Link
Hassani, Uraidah. “Why We Must Engage adolescent Girls in Climate Change Solutions”, World Bank Blogs, October 10, 2022. Article Link
Omari, Kulthoum. “Gender and Climate Change: Botswana Case Study” Heinrich Böll Stiftung, July - November 2008. Case Study Link
Sauer, Megan ‘Jeff Bezos says everything on Earth has improved since ‘the good old days’—except for 1 thing.’ CNBC, 3 January, 2025. Article Link
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