08/03/2020

Why The Climate Crisis Is Harming Women More Than Men

On International Women's Day, Dr Helen Pankhurst is calling for women to work together in the face of the climate crisis
On International Women’s day 2020, #March4Women – the global movement for gender equality – will be bringing the links between feminism and environmentalism to the fore. This is partly because of similarities between the two in terms of activism resulting from frustration with the status quo and lessons around tactics linked to direct action. It is also because women and girls are disproportionately affected by the devastating impacts of climate change.

Women and girls are the ones who trudge further and further, mile after back-breaking mile, to fetch water when their community is ravaged by drought. They are the ones who take responsibility for looking after the young, the old, the disabled.

When pressures increase on a family, it is the girls who miss out on school in order to help out in the home and on the land. Daughters are dispatched to early marriage when there are too many mouths to feed.

When regions are flattened by cyclones and deluged with floods, when families lose their homes and their livelihoods – when all is lost, women and girls are sometimes forced to turn to ‘transactional sex’ to feed their families. It is they who are exposed to the risk of rape and sexual exploitation in the refugee and displaced people’s camps. It is they that human traffickers prey on – their vulnerability increased at times of crisis.

We can argue about the extent to which the climate emergency is man-made or not. And I mean man-made in its literal sense of ‘made by men’ – because we could look at who is making the decisions at a national and international level in the structures of economic, political and social power. However, whether ‘man made’ or not, there is no disputing that the climate crisis magnifies each and every brutal facet of gender inequality. We cannot achieve climate justice without gender justice.

If there is hope for the future, it lies in the voices of those who stand up to say 'this is not good enough and we can do better'. We need to reach a tipping point where those in power move from empty words to deeds. And that exactly is what we must create, and what we are creating, right now.

This International Women’s day – in advance of the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow – we are highlighting that there will be no climate justice without gender justice. We are calling for both climate justice and gender justice – the two go hand in hand. Join us.

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