On the Front Line: Women and the Climate Crisis

by Ella Ticktin-Smith

It is widely acknowledged that climate change does not affect everyone equally. As global warming undermines livelihoods and displaces populations worldwide, it is the marginalised groups in society who will feel these changes most acutely. Despite remarkable progress in women’s rights over the last century, the structural inequalities and prejudices faced by women around the world continue to threaten their ability to respond to the impacts of climate change.

As women are particularly vulnerable to poverty, it is easy to see why this might be the case. When extreme weather events like droughts or forest fires strike, it is the poorest communities who find it hardest to recover from the loss of homes, livelihoods and natural resources. In fact, the UN has suggested that up to 80% of climate refugees are women. It goes without saying that those most at risk are women of colour and indigenous women, highlighting how, as ever, gender intersects with issues of race and class.

There are many more reasons why women appear to bear the brunt of climate breakdown. As the primary caretakers in many families, women are often the first to go hungry during times of food shortage, as they sacrifice their own diet to prevent other family members from becoming malnourished. In rural communities, women also shoulder the responsibility of collecting water and energy resources—a task that becomes increasingly time-consuming as climate change makes these resources harder to locate. In many cases, young girls have to miss school in order to source water, while others are forced to drop out of education entirely.

The ways in which climate change exacerbates existing inequalities can be stark. Crucially, on average, more women die during natural disasters than men. Often, this is because they haven’t been taught how to swim, or they fear leaving the house unattended. Women are not just at risk from the natural environment—catastrophic events also result in a rise in gender-based violence, human trafficking and exploitation.

It is therefore unsurprising that as governments continue to fall short of their environmental targets, and the climate crisis continues to escalate, many women have taken matters into their own hands.

For example, the 26-year old Oladosu Adenike is a climate activist and eco-feminist from Nigeria, who began advocating for action on climate change during her time at university. As well as using community activism and journalism to spread awareness about the effects of global warming in Africa, she also founded ‘I Lead Climate’, a pan-African youth movement devoted to raising awareness about the impact of climate change in conflict zones.

Yet, unsurprisingly, environmental activism can be a dangerous pursuit. Disha Ravi is a 22-year-old Indian climate activist, who in 2019 co-founded the Indian Fridays for Future movement. Her own family has felt the effects of climate change first hand: her home city of Bengaluru is predicted to run out of water within years and her grandparents were farmers who repeatedly struggled with the effects of global warming. Having helped to organise school strikes across India, Ravi has been a key figure in the Indian environmental movement in the last few years, recently expressing her support for the Indian farmers’ protest. In February 2021, after she shared a protest ‘toolkit’ on social media, Ravi was arrested and placed in the custody of Delhi Police without a lawyer, having been charged with criminal conspiracy and sedition. She has now been granted bail.

There are many more female activists, ranging from the clean water-advocate Autumn Peltier from the Wikwemikong First Nation to the youth climate-striker Greta Thunberg in Sweden. Plus, alongside these campaigners are the millions of women worldwide who are having to adapt to the challenges posed by climate change on a daily basis. Neither is this a new phenomenon: many communities have been struggling with issues like environmental degradation, species extinction and pollution for decades.

For many of us in Britain, it can be easy to forget that the climate crisis hasn’t taken a break—especially when COVID-19 has unsurprisingly dominated headlines for the last year. Yet for many people around the world, this is a reality that is impossible to forget. So, let this be a clear reminder that while the battle for a safer, green world may be long, we owe it to ourselves and to each other to keep on fighting.