Gender Disparity in Climate Change Impacts: Why Women Bear Heavier Burdens than Men

Climate change affects everyone, but its impacts are far from equal. Around the world, women consistently experience more severe consequences of climate-related disasters, food insecurity, and environmental degradation than men. This disparity isn’t coincidental-it stems from deeply entrenched social structures, gender roles, and systemic inequalities that amplify women’s vulnerability while limiting their adaptive capacity. Understanding why women carry heavier climate burdens is essential for developing effective, equitable climate policies.

Gender as a socio-cultural dimension of climate vulnerability
Limited access to resources and decision-making
Drought and food security challenges
Women’s wage labour as a coping strategy
Different emotional and practical impacts on men and women
Women’s increased practical burdens
Migration and changed work patterns
Hazardous working conditions
Health and nutritional impact
Women eating last and least
Consequences for maternal and child health
Limited decision-making power over food
Toward gender-responsive climate action

Gender as a socio-cultural dimension of climate vulnerability

Gender is a critical socio-cultural factor in assessing climate change vulnerability, yet it remains inadequately incorporated into adaptation research and planning. Women’s heightened vulnerability doesn’t arise from biological differences but from socially constructed roles and responsibilities that societies assign based on gender.

In many regions, women bear primary responsibility for securing food, water, and fuel for their families. When these resources become scarce due to changing climate conditions, women must work longer hours and travel greater distances. This burden increases workloads while simultaneously reducing time available for income-generating activities, education, or rest.

Research demonstrates that gender inequality in education, labour, and economic domains results in women being the most vulnerable population in the most vulnerable countries. Women in low- and middle-income countries face particularly severe health outcomes because gendered roles, combined with socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental factors, compound their disadvantages.

Limited access to resources and decision-making

Women often lack access to critical resources that could help them adapt to climate change. According to FAO, women who work in agricultural production tend to do so under highly unfavourable conditions. They are concentrated in the poorest countries where alternative livelihoods are unavailable, and they maintain work intensity even during climate-induced weather shocks.

The gender gap in land productivity between female- and male-managed farms of equal size is 24 percent. Women earn approximately 18.4 percent less than men in agricultural wage employment. This economic disparity limits women’s capacity to invest in climate-resilient technologies, purchase drought-resistant seeds, or access credit for adaptation measures.

Drought and food security challenges

Climate change causes increasingly frequent and severe droughts in monsoon-dependent agricultural areas, leading directly to food insecurity. Small-scale farmers, particularly women, face compounded burdens when drought destroys crops and threatens household food supplies.

When climate shocks devastate agricultural production, male family members often migrate to urban areas seeking wage labour. This migration pattern leaves women behind to manage households, care for children and elderly relatives, and find alternative livelihoods under increasingly difficult conditions. Women must then assume all agricultural responsibilities previously shared with men while simultaneously seeking additional income sources.

Women’s wage labour as a coping strategy

Research conducted in Andhra Pradesh, India, documented how women respond to climate-induced crop losses. Studies found that a greater number of women, especially those from lower socioeconomic classes, work on daily wages to overcome crop losses. In response to climate variability, approximately 70 percent of women undertook wage labour as a primary coping strategy.

Women frequently migrate to cities seeking construction work or other manual labour opportunities. These jobs often involve hazardous conditions, inadequate safety measures, and exploitation. Data from India shows that in states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra, women account for more than half of agricultural labourers. Despite their significant workforce participation, only about 37 percent of these women were cultivators who owned land, while approximately 63 percent worked as labourers on farms owned by others.

Different emotional and practical impacts on men and women

Climate change affects men and women differently based on their gender-specific roles and responsibilities. These differences manifest in both emotional experiences and practical daily burdens.

Studies reveal that men often report higher emotional stress related to climate impacts, primarily due to pressure to mobilize loans and maintain their traditional role as primary breadwinners. The inability to provide financially for their families during climate crises creates significant psychological distress for men who identify strongly with provider roles.

Women’s increased practical burdens

Women, meanwhile, experience climate impacts more directly through increased practical workloads. As traditional support systems change and water sources become more distant or unreliable, women must travel farther and spend more time collecting water. This additional burden reduces time available for other productive activities and places added pressure on girls, who sometimes must leave school to help their mothers manage increased household responsibilities.

The breakdown of traditional community support networks during climate stress further isolates women. Where extended family or community members previously shared caregiving and household responsibilities, climate-induced migration and economic pressures fragment these support systems, leaving individual women to manage alone.

Migration and changed work patterns

Climate-induced migration creates distinct challenges for women. When men migrate for work, women remaining in rural areas must assume roles previously performed by both partners. When women themselves migrate, they often face heightened risks of exploitation, violence, and unsafe working conditions.

According to UN Environment, 80 percent of people displaced by climate change are women or girls. These displaced women and girls face heightened risks of poverty, violence, and unintended pregnancies as they migrate to safer locations. Climate-related displacement exacerbates existing vulnerabilities rather than creating temporary hardships that resolve once relocation is complete.

Hazardous working conditions

Women who migrate for work often find themselves in precarious employment situations. Construction sites, brick kilns, and other manual labour opportunities available to migrating women frequently lack basic safety protections. Women tend to buffer climate impacts through extreme strategies including reducing their own food consumption, collecting wild food, migrating, selling assets, and even taking on risky jobs that expose them to physical danger or exploitation.

The feminisation of agriculture-where women increasingly comprise the majority of agricultural workers as men migrate to non-farm employment-creates additional vulnerabilities. Women working small plots with limited resources and no formal land tenure are poorly positioned to implement climate adaptation strategies or recover from climate-related crop failures.

Health and nutritional impact

Climate change affects farmers’ income and food security in ways that disproportionately harm women’s health and nutrition. When household food supplies diminish, gendered patterns of food distribution become a survival mechanism that systematically disadvantages women and girls.

Women eating last and least

The IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land documents that when food is scarce, women reduce their food consumption relative to other family members. These patterns vary by age, ethnicity, culture, region, and social position, but the general trend holds across diverse contexts: women sacrifice their own nutrition to ensure that men and children are fed.

Research from multiple countries confirms this pattern. In Zimbabwe, women reported that children and men eat first while women eat only after others have been fed. During Kenya’s prolonged drought from 2020 to 2022, women struggled to collect enough water and, when food was scarce, would eat less than men. This self-sacrifice becomes a traditional coping strategy passed between generations.

Consequences for maternal and child health

When women consistently reduce their own food intake, consequences extend beyond their individual health. Malnourished women are more likely to give birth to low-birth-weight babies who face increased risk of disease and premature death. Underweight babies are 20 percent more likely to die before age five.

Malnutrition also increases women’s risk of developing iron deficiencies and anemia. In some developing countries, up to 75 percent of women are anemic, and worldwide, approximately 20 percent of maternal deaths result from anemia or iron shortage. The intergenerational transmission of malnutrition perpetuates cycles of vulnerability that climate change intensifies.

Limited decision-making power over food

Adding complexity to these nutritional challenges, women often lack decision-making power regarding household food storage and sales. Even when women are primarily responsible for food production and preparation, men frequently control decisions about when to sell stored food, what crops to plant, and how household resources are allocated. This disconnect between responsibility and authority limits women’s ability to protect their own nutrition and that of their children.

Research indicates that women are often less able to generate independent income, leading to increased reliance on male household members and exacerbating gender inequality. When men are psychologically and socially stressed due to insufficient food from climate shocks, they sometimes express frustrations through violence against women, creating additional barriers to women’s wellbeing.

Toward gender-responsive climate action

Addressing the gendered impacts of climate change requires recognizing women not only as vulnerable populations but as agents of change with valuable knowledge and capabilities. UN Women emphasizes that women are on the front lines of climate resilience actions in communities worldwide, leading efforts in sustainable agriculture, water management, and disaster response. Yet they frequently lack access to financial services necessary to scale up their contributions.

The FAO reports that closing the gender gap in farm productivity and agricultural wages would increase global gross domestic product by nearly one trillion dollars and reduce the number of food-insecure people by 45 million. Gender-responsive climate finance, policies that address women’s specific vulnerabilities, and meaningful inclusion of women in climate decision-making are essential for effective adaptation.

Empowering women through collective action, securing their land rights, and ensuring equal access to resources, education, and technology can transform climate adaptation outcomes. When women have decision-making power and resources, they invest in their families’ nutrition, health, and education-creating resilience that benefits entire communities.

What do you think? How can climate policies better address the specific vulnerabilities that women face? What role should local women’s knowledge play in developing climate adaptation strategies for agricultural communities?

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Table of Contents

Gender as a socio-cultural dimension of climate vulnerability 🔗

Limited access to resources and decision-making 🔗

Drought and food security challenges 🔗

Women’s wage labour as a coping strategy 🔗

Different emotional and practical impacts on men and women 🔗

Women’s increased practical burdens 🔗

Migration and changed work patterns 🔗

Hazardous working conditions 🔗

Health and nutritional impact 🔗

Women eating last and least 🔗

Consequences for maternal and child health 🔗

Limited decision-making power over food 🔗

Toward gender-responsive climate action 🔗