Box 5.4 | Gender, Race, Intersectionality and Climate Mitigation
There is high evidence and high agreement that empowering women benefits both mitigation and adaptation, because women prioritise climate change in their voting, purchasing, community leadership, and work, both professionally and at home (high evidence, high agreement). Increasing voice and agency for those marginalised in intersectional ways by indigeneity, race, ethnicity, dis/ability, and other factors has positive effects for climate policy (high evidence, high agreement).
Climate change affects people differently along all measures of difference and identity, which have intersectional impacts linked to economic vulnerability and marginalisation (Morello Frosch et al. 2009; Dankelman 2010; Habtezion 2013; Godfrey and Torres 2016; Walsh 2016; Flatø et al. 2017; Goodrich et al. 2019; Perkins 2019; Gür 2020). Worldwide, racialised and Indigenous people bear the brunt of environmental and climate injustices through geographic location in extraction and energy ‘sacrifice zones’, areas most impacted by extreme weather events, and/or through inequitable energy access (Aubrey 2019; Jafry 2019; Gonzalez 2020; Lacey- Barnacle et al. 2020; Porter et al. 2020; Temper et al. 2020) Disparities in climate change vulnerability not only reflect pre-existing inequalities, they also reinforce them. For example, inequities in income and in the ownership and control of household assets, familial responsibilities due to male out-migration, declining food and water access, and increased disaster exposure can undermine women’s ability to achieve economic independence, enhance human capital, and maintain physical and mental health and well-being (Chandra et al. 2017; Eastin 2018; Das et al. 2019). Studies during the COVID-19 crisis have found that, in general, women’s economic and productive lives have been affected disproportionately to men’s (Alon et al. 2020; ILO 2020). Women have less access to social protections and their capacity to absorb economic shocks is very low, so they face a ‘triple burden’ during crises – including those resulting from climate change – and this is heightened for women in the less-developed countries and for those who are intersectionally vulnerable (Coates et al. 2020; McLaren et al. 2020; Wenham et al. 2020; Azong and Kelso 2021; Erwin et al. 2021; Maobe and Atela 2021; Nicoson 2021; Sultana 2021; Versey 2021). Because men currently hold the majority of energy-sector jobs, energy transition will impact them economically and psychologically; benefits, burdens and opportunities on both the demand and supply sides of the mitigation transition have a range of equity implications (Pearl-Martinez and Stephens 2017; Standal et al. 2020; Mang-Benza 2021). Mitigating gendered climate impacts requires addressing inequitable power relations throughout society (Wester and Lama 2019).
Women’s well-being and gender-responsive climate policy have been emphasised in international agreements including the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC 2015), Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women General Recommendation 37 (Vijeyarasa 2021), and the 2016 Decision 21/CP.22 on Gender and Climate Change (UNFCCC 2016; Larson et al. 2018). Increasing the participation of women and marginalised social groups, and addressing their special needs, helps to meet a range of SDGs, improve disaster and crisis response, increase social trust, and improve climate mitigation policy development and implementation (Alber 2009; Whyte 2014; Elnakat and Gomez 2015; Salehi et al. 2015; Buckingham and Kulcur 2017; Cohen 2017; Kronsell 2017; Lee and Zusman 2019).
Women have a key role in the changing energy economy due to their demand for and end use of energy resources in socially-gendered productive roles in food production and processing, health, care, education, clothing purchases and maintenance, commerce, and other work, both within and beyond the home (Räty and Carlsson-Kanyama 2009; Oparaocha and Dutta 2011; Bob and Babugura 2014; Macgregor 2014; Perez et al. 2015; Bradshaw 2018; Clancy and Feenstra 2019; Clancy et al. 2019; Fortnam et al. 2019; Rao et al. 2019a; Quandt 2019; Horen Greenford et al. 2020; Johnson 2020). Women’s work and decision-making are central in the food chain and agricultural output in most developing countries, and in household management everywhere. Emissions from cooking fuels can cause serious health damage, and unsustainable extraction of biofuels can also hurt mitigation (Bailis et al. 2015), so considering health, biodiversity and climate tradeoffs and co-benefits is important (Rosenthal et al. 2018; Aberilla et al. 2020; Mazorra et al. 2020). Policies on energy use and consumption are often focused on technical issues related to energy supply, thereby overlooking demand- side factors such as household decision-making, unpaid work, livelihoods and care (Himmelweit 2002; Perch 2011; Fumo 2014; Hans et al. 2019; Huyer and Partey 2020). Such gender-blindness represents the manifestation of wider issues related to political ideology, culture and tradition (Carr and Thompson 2014; Thoyre 2020; Perez et al. 2015; Fortnam et al. 2019).
Women, and all those who are economically and/or politically marginalised, often have less access to energy and use less, not just because they may be poorer but case studies show because their consumption choices are more ecologically inclined and their energy use is more efficient (Lee et al. 2013; Permana et al. 2015; Li et al. 2019). Women’s carbon footprints are about 6–28% lower than men’s (with high variation across countries), mostly based on their lower meat consumption and lower vehicle use (Isenhour and Ardenfors 2009; Räty and Carlsson-Kanyama 2009; Räty and Carlsson-Kanyama 2010; Barnett et al. 2012; Medina and Toledo-Bruno 2016; Ahmad et al. 2017; Fernström Nåtby and Rönnerfalk 2018; Li et al. 2019). Gender-based income redistribution in the form of pay equity for women could reduce emissions if the redistribution is revenue neutral (Terry 2009; Dengler and Strunk 2018). Also, advances in female education and reproductive health, especially voluntary family planning, can contribute greatly to reducing world population growth (Abel et al. 2016; Dodson et al. 2020).
Carbon emissions are lower per capita in countries where women have more political ‘voice’, controlling for GDP per capita and a range of other factors (Ergas and York 2012). While most people recognise that climate change is happening (Lewis et al. 2018; Ballew et al. 2019), climate denialism is more prevalent among men (McCright and Dunlap 2011; Anshelm and Hultman 2014; Nagel 2015; Jylhä et al. 2016), while women are more likely to be environmental activists, and to support stronger environmental and climate policies (Stein 2004; McCright and Xiao 2014, Whyte 2014). Racialised groups are more likely to be concerned about climate change and to take political action to support climate mitigation policies (Leiserowitz and Akerlof 2010; Godfrey and Torres 2016; Schuldt and Pearson 2016; Pearson et al. 2017; Ballew et al. 2020; Johnson 2020). This underscores the important synergies between equity and mitigation. The contributions of women, racialised people, and indigenous people, who are socially positioned as those first and most affected by climate change – and therefore experts on appropriate climate responses – are substantial (Dankelman and Jansen 2010; Wickramasinghe 2015; Black 2016; Vinyeta et al. 2016; Pearse 2017). Equitable power, participation, and agency in climate policymaking is hence an effective contribution for improving governance and decision-making on climate change mitigation (Reckien et al. 2017; Collins 2019). Indigenous knowledge is an important source of guidance for biodiversity conservation, impact assessment, governance, disaster preparedness and resilience (Salick and Ross 2009; Green and Raygorodetsky 2010; Speranza et al. 2010; Mekuriaw Bizuneh 2013; Mekuriaw 2017), and women are often the local educators, passing on and utilising traditional and indigenous knowledge (Ketlhoilwe 2013; Onyige 2017; Azong et al. 2018).
Higher female political participation, controlled for other factors, leads to higher stringency in climate policies, and results in lower GHG emissions (Cook et al. 2019). Gender equity is also correlated with lower per capita CO2-eq emissions (Ergas and York 2012).
In societies where women have more economic equity, their votes push political decision-making in the direction of environmental and sustainable development policies, less high-emission militarisation, and more emphasis on equity and social policies such as via wealth and capital gains taxes (Ergas and York 2012; Resurrección 2013; UNEP 2013; Glemarec et al. 2016; Bryan et al. 2018; Crawford 2019). Changing social norms on race and climate are linked and policy-relevant (Benegal 2018; Elias et al. 2018; Slocum 2018; Gach 2019; Wallace-Wells 2019; Temple 2020; Drolet 2021). For all these reasons, climate policies are strengthened by including more differently-situated knowledge and diverse perspectives, such as feminist expertise in the study of power (Bell et al. 2020; Lieu et al. 2020); clarifying equity goals (e.g., distinguishing among ‘reach, ‘benefit’, and ‘empowerment’; obtaining disaggregated data and using clear empirical equity measures; and confronting deeply-ingrained inequities in society (Lau et al. 2021). Inclusivity in climate governance spans mitigation–adaptation, supply–demand and formal–informal sector boundaries in its positive effects (Morello Frosch et al. 2009; Dankelman 2010; Bryan and Behrman 2013; Habtezion 2013; Godfrey and Torres 2016; Walsh 2016; Flatø et al. 2017; Wilson et al. 2018; Goodrich et al. 2019; Perkins 2019; Bell et al. 2020; Gür 2020).
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