The Pearl of Climate Action: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment

Earth’s geographical and climatic conditions shape its weather systems, climate zones and river networks. This rich diversity has been the key to human development and enjoyment of life. For example, waterways are used for commercial purposes, such as agriculture, electricity generation, travel, shipping and fisheries, and for leisure activities such as swimming, sailing and windsurfing. But what can be said when it comes to equality and justice in the opportunities for all to benefit from this rich diversity?

Diversity¹, equity², inclusion³ and justice⁴ (aka DEI&J or JEDI) are widely used terms that are garnering greater awareness. Policies are being implemented to promote the representation and participation of groups with diverse identities, age, cultures, backgrounds and perspectives in almost every sector. Climate change is a key area with strong commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice from the legislative level down to personal initiatives.

Climate change has highlighted environmental injustices: its impacts occur disproportionately high across regions and within communities (Ngcamu, 2023; Otto et al., 2017; Thomas et al., 2019) that are not major greenhouse gas emitters. To prevent further heightening of vulnerability and inequality, global climate justice must be manifest by protecting and empowering marginalized populations – youth, indigenous people, minorities and women – for climate action. Within the context of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 10 (reduced inequalities) specifically address gender diversity, equity and inclusion. SDG 13 (climate action) supports these causes and has attracted innumerable youth and indigenous people thanks to events like Climate Week and movements like Fridays for Future. However, more emphasis is needed on gender equality and equity⁵ and women’s empowerment for climate action, especially in relation to hydrometeorological services such as early warning systems for floods and droughts.

Gender equality and equity for climate action

Gender⁶ inequalities between women and men remain. Conscious and subconscious biases hinder societal progress, even in areas such as climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience. This societal problem is becoming more visible and consequential as the impacts of climate change intensify around the world and further exacerbate pre-existing social inequalities and current climate vulnerabilities (Parsons et al., 2024).

The climate crisis is not gender neutral. Women are among the most vulnerable to disasters and bear a heavy climate burden (Ngcamu, 2023; Parsons et al., 2024). Women and girls are often disproportionately impacted during extreme weather, climate and water-related events, which further amplifies existing gender inequalities and poses unique threats to their livelihoods, rights, health and safety. When climate change impacts result in the displacement of people, women and girl migrants experience a double vulnerability as they are particularly easy victims for human traffickers, forced labor, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions as well as of sexual and gender-based violence.

Limited or lack of gender equality and equity for climate action manifests itself in many forms, levels and places: from the classroom to work environments, from academia to policy realms. For instance, women are not represented adequately in critical United Nations climate talks (Alcobé & Harty, 2023; Nathanson & Jaffe, 2022) and women scientists’ participation in IPCC7 assessments and leadership has been low (Huyer et al., 2020).

Regardless of where, when and how inequality, injustice and unfairness occur, the fact remains the same: without the empowerment of women, climate action will not be sustainable.

Women’s empowerment in science, policy and practice

Climate action – which often functions at the interface of science, policy and practice (SPP) – should be rooted on principles of gender diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI; Figure 1). Women’s leadership is a key pillar of climate action. In this respect, the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) have a fundamental responsibility in enhancing the scope, quality and level of women’s participation in their organizational policies and decision-making.

The momentum in academia towards nurturing a culture of gender mainstreaming in science has been exemplary. For example, despite statistics on perceptions and impacts of gender inequality in the Earth and space sciences that indicate substantial room for improvement (Popp et al., 2019), greater awareness on gender biases (and the level of concern on its impacts) is driving more change and long-term cultural transformation.

In the context of climate change and development, integration of gender equality into climate policy has been slow at both global and national levels (Huyer et al., 2020). Women’s political leadership in global climate diplomacy can allow for more integration of DEI principles and encourage gender sensitive climate policy making while tackling gender inequalities in climate mitigation and adaptation (Lau et al., 2021). It should be noted that improving the underrepresentation of women in climate negotiation talks requires government action backed by finances.

Figure 1. The central role of hydrometeorological services in climate action should be based on gender diversity, equity and inclusion to promote women’s empowerment.

Women and hydromet services 

Achieving gender equity in operational hydrometeorological services – both in the design and the delivery of the services – is crucial for disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. Women’s talents, energy and skills are underused assets for the support of climate action and must be harnessed universally across all geographies and institutional contexts. The WMO photo album Women in Action highlights the various roles and responsibilities of women working at NMHSs.

Women interact in various ways with the five essential elements of the value chain for effective hydrometeorological services: (i) observations and monitoring, (ii) research, modelling and prediction, (iii) services information system, (iv) engagement between users and providers of services, and (v) capacity development. For example, the inclusion of women in the development of hydrometeorological services leads to more successful co-designed gender-responsive weather, hydrological and climate services, which improves the efficiency and use of services by women (as public citizens).

Claudia Riedl changing measurement equipment in the drill holes of the permafrost project Sonnblick observatory, Austria.

ZAMG

WMO vision and strategy on women

Building weather and climate resilient societies while ensuring gender equality and empowering women is a priority for WMO. As an intergovernmental organization, WMO has a key role in empowering women in hydrometeorology nationally and globally for climate action. First and foremost, it can participate actively in wider United Nations efforts towards gender-responsive climate action to enable women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in the processes of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – for example, in the Lima Work Programme on Gender and its Gender Action Plan (GAP).

Secondly, it can push for accelerating the inclusion of women within the Secretariat and among WMO Members. The 2015 WMO GAP brought many positive changes through the adoption of WMO Gender Equality Policy. The 2023 updated WMO GAP raised the minimum target from 30% to 40% for gender composition – women’s participation – in governance bodies and their working structures. The gender statistics presented at the Nineteenth World Meteorological Congress were promising in this respect.

The most recent GAP approved by the third session of the Commission for Weather, Climate, Hydrological, Marine and Related Environmental Services and Applications (SERCOM-3) in March aims to further accelerate the momentum. SERCOM-3 included a Gender Action Day, which defined the next steps for mainstreaming gender-responsive and inclusive services, especially multi-hazard early warning systems in the Early Warnings for All initiative.

Thirdly, WMO promotes gender equality and inclusiveness as essential components of project design planning and implementation. Guidance materials to assist Members with making weather, hydrological and climate services more gender-sensitive are widely available (see Congress report, Cg-19/INF. 4.5(1)).

An Indonesian meteorological service officer during a training session.

BMKG

NMHSs and WMO GAP

In alignment with WMO vision and strategy, NMHSs too have a major role in climate action. Most importantly, NMHSs must keep working towards a gender-balanced approach in their governance structures and work environments. All WMO Members and partners should contribute to advancing women’s empowerment in disaster risk reduction through the design of gender-responsive multi-hazard early warning systems. The above listed resources on gender-responsive weather, hydrological and climate services are available for that purpose.

Let’s keep the discussion going! Is your NMHS addressing gender equality or mainstreaming gender in its strategy? How so?
 

Footnotes

1 Diversity refers to the characteristics of a person.
2 Equity acknowledges that circumstances (opportunities) available to each person are different and need to be accounted for.
3 Inclusion is about creation of space for everyone to have a say.
4 Justice highlights the need for equal and fair access to opportunities.
5 In this article, "gender" related terms and concepts are used in alignment with instruments, norms and standards adopted in United Nations frameworks and intergovernmental agreements where they hold a binary context. However, WMO acknowledges that individuals may not identify as man or woman.
6 Gender refers to the roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society at a given time considers appropriate for men and women
7 IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

References

Alcobé, F. & Harty, E. (2023). Understanding the gender imbalance at the international climate negotiations. International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Huyer, S., Acosta, M., Gumucio, T., & Ilham, J.I.J. (2020). Can we turn the tide? Confronting gender inequality in climate policy. Gender & Development, 28(3), 571-591. https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2020.1836817

Lau, J.D., Kleiber, D., Lawless, S., & Cohen, P.J. (2021). Gender equality in climate policy and practice hindered by assumptions. Nature Climate Change, 11(3), 186-192. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-00999-7

Nathanson, C. & Jaffe, A.M. (2022). Women and Gender in Climate Diplomacy. Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs.

Ngcamu, B.S. (2023). Climate change effects on vulnerable populations in the Global South: A systematic review. Natural Hazards, 118(2), 977–991. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-023-06070-2

Otto, I.M., Reckien, D., Reyer, C.P.O., Marcus, R., Le Masson, V., Jones, L., Norton, A., & Serdeczny, O. (2017). Social vulnerability to climate change: A review of concepts and evidence. Regional Environmental Change, 17(6), 1651–1662. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1105-9

Parsons, E.S., Jowell, A., Veidis, E., Barry, M., & Israni, S. T. (2024). Climate change and inequality. Pediatric Research, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-024-03153-z

Popp, A.L., Lutz, S.R., Khatami, S., van Emmerik, T. H., & Knoben, W. J. (2019). A global survey on the perceptions and impacts of gender inequality in the Earth and space sciences. Earth and Space Science, 6(8), 1460-1468. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EA000706

Thomas, K., Hardy, R.D., Lazrus, H., Mendez, M., Orlove, B., Rivera‐Collazo, I., Roberts, J.T., Rockman, M., Warner, B.P., & Winthrop, R. (2019). Explaining differential vulnerability to climate change: A social science review. WIREs Climate Change, 10(2), e565. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.565