The impact of the climate crisis on women

This summer was the hottest recorded on Earth. We broke heat records in the Northwest Territories, British Columbia recorded the highest urban temperature in Canada, and our wildfire emissions doubled from previous years. Canada is warming at double and triple the global rate. How about the impacts on women, girls, and gender-diverse people? What does that look like? The topic remains under-explored. Underdeveloped regions of the world have more robust research and track how women are the majority population displaced by climate disasters. Paulette Senior is president and CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation. Handout photograph Still, in these early days of gendered climate research in Canada, climate change clearly compounds existing gender inequalities, and makes matters even worse for women, girls, and Two Spirit, trans, and non-binary people who face barriers like poverty, ageism, colonial displacement, and racism. Gender pay gaps—wider for racialized and Indigenous women, and women with disabilities—reduce capacity to weather economic storms. Climate emergencies are leading to similar economic troubles that we witnessed in the COVID-19 pandemic: greater job loss and heavier care-giving burdens for women in part-time, front-line service, and care work jobs. Emergency-driven food and housing insecurities prove most difficult for women with young and elderly dependents and lower incomes who struggle to afford groceries and shelter on a good day. We’ve seen it in past droughts and floods; we’re seeing it again amidst intensified wildfires. Pollutants that are the cause and consequence of climate emergencies not only pose unique threats to women’s reproductive and mental and physical health, but they also increase the risk faced by older populations—more likely to be women—and they compound stress on health-care workers and family caregivers—also more likely to be women. Due to weather, outbreaks, conflict, or some combination of all three, disasters trigger spikes in gender-based violence such as sexual assault and intimate partner abuse. This is devastating in Canada, where our baseline rate of gendered violence is high: 44 per cent of women experience intimate partner violence; Indigenous women are killed at nearly seven times the rate of non-Indigenous women; women with disabilities are three times more likely to experience violent victimization; and transgender people are more likely to be targeted. Governments have been slow to act on the gendered impacts of climate change, and Canada is no exception. The federal government has adopted climate measures since 2015, but it's unclear just how gender-responsive the plans and actions are. Some may look at gendered implications of climate change and deem them too wide-reaching for our typical public policy tools to make a dent. But this thinking may be a function of a narrow colonial worldview and policy approaches. First Nations, Métis, and Inuit women acting as water keepers and protectors, land defenders, and advocates for Arctic preservation and decolonizing climate policy have not been so limited in their understanding of the problems and the solutions. Policymakers, organizers, and anyone who wants to take action on climate change needs to heed their leadership. Decision-makers at all levels of government turning to and banking on climate adaptation and mitigation strategies can’t be naïve about the gendered impacts. Too many investments into climate-related technological innovations miss the mark by not addressing what women and gender-diverse people go through in our modern crises. Efforts to reduce gendered fallout of climate change—including relief for and prevention of widening pay and economic gaps, heavier care-giving burdens, and spikes in abuse—need to happen right alongside investments in cleaner fuels, greener transportation, and carbon removal systems. A focus on the gendered impacts of climate crises will not only help us achieve our world’s thwarted gender equality goals and ensure rights, power, and voice for over 50 per cent of the population in the throes of contemporary climate change. It will also reinforce the tidal shift we need to the ways we live, work, and play, cementing the adaptation innovations we rely on to save our future. Paulette Senior is president and CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation. The Hill Times

The impact of the climate crisis on women

Efforts to reduce gendered fallout of climate change need to happen alongside investments in cleaner fuels, greener transportation, and carbon removal systems.

Time for a shift: Canada must treat Alzheimer’s like other progressive diseases

Between wars and fears of fascism in the U.S., there’s plenty to be scared about

Poilievre can’t just ‘cat-call from the periphery’: Tom McElroy

The problem of political homelessness

Liberals have fumbled green energy transition, and Conservatives have zero interest

Trump alienates women and Puerto Rican voters

Director-level changes for ministers Ien, Petitpas Taylor

Trudeau’s feminist policies have failed Palestinian women and girls

Remembrance is not enough: action needed to address gendered violence in Canada

NDP-backed petition on trans rights surges as Tory Leader Poilievre strikes out at ‘Trudeau’s radical gender ideology’

Do emergency plans really protect women?

News

Get free news updates

Opinion

Submit a guest opinion article

resources

Advertise

subscribe

get help

The impact of the climate crisis on women

Efforts to reduce gendered fallout of climate change need to happen alongside investments in cleaner fuels, greener transportation, and carbon removal systems.

Get The Weekend Point of View Newsletter