Currently, the world is nowhere near on track to achieve SDG5: Gender Equality, let alone the 2030 Agenda. In fact, UN Women’s The Gender Snapshot 2022 estimates that it will take another 286 years to remove discriminatory laws and close prevailing gaps in legal protections for women and girls, putting gender equality far beyond the reach of our lifetime – and highlighting the challenges that lie ahead. Gender equality has been significantly challenged over the last few years—– first, as a result of COVID-19 and later, with the Ukraine war and the ensuing food security issues that have emerged in its wake – eroding hard-won gains in areas such as girls’ education and child marriage. This is only set to worsen as the impacts of climate change increase.

As awareness of climate change and the potential devastation it could wreck on human civilisation grows, so does the need for gender-responsive climate policies. Women and girls are 14 times more likely to die during a disaster, and they also make up 80% of people displaced by climate change. Coupled with a tendency for women to be poorer, less educated and hold less decision-making powers, these inequalities also mean that women are disproportionately more vulnerable to climate-related hazards than men. It is therefore vital to consider specific needs of women when crafting policies related to climate, so that these policies do not maintain or exacerbate gender inequities.

Gender mainstreaming presents a potential strategy to meet the need for gender-responsive climate strategies. This means ensuring that all planned actions and outcomes achieved are explicitly gender-responsive, and that women are also actively involved in leadership and decision-making. The need for gender mainstreaming was recently highlighted by UN Secretary-General (SG) António Guterres in his remarks to the Commission on the Status of Women. SG Guterres mentioned that the UN has commissioned an independent review of its “capacity around gender equality across all pillars of work.”

The Gender Action Plan of the United Nations Frame-work Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has emphasised that participation is key in achieving and sustaining the equal and meaningful participation of women in decision-making processes. There has also been emerging evidence that increased female political representation in national parliaments is leading to more stringent climate change policy outcomes.

Similarly, women’s participation in bottom-up based initiatives are also key to translating their experiences into policy. However, even participation – while important – must be gender-mainstreamed. For example, women tend to bear the brunt of unpaid domestic work which limits their time to participate in initiatives organised by government agencies, NGOs or other cli-mate actors.

Therefore, considering the lived realities of women which prevent them from participating in climate initiatives, society can ensure such initiatives do not over-burden women in the guise of empowering them. Such initiatives that seek to empower women must either work around their domestic work schedules (which might lead them to being over-burdened) or perhaps work to lighten their workload such as by offering childcare assistance while women participate in ongoing initiatives.

In order for humanity to have any hope of achieving SDGs in a timeframe that not only meets the 2030 deadline, but also work to mitigate the looming climate crisis, half the global population cannot be disregarded. Gender-mainstreaming climate policies are vital – not only due to their disproportionate effects on women, but also to the need to ensure the inclusion of women’s lived knowledge and experiences in climate-related planning and decision-making. Only then, will women be able to live up to their fullest potential, and truly contribute to building resilience in a time of a looming climate crisis.