COP28 PARTICIPATION STATISTICS!
We know you are waiting for the latest Party-by-Party data on women's participation. Our statistics are comparable year to year as they are based on the UNFCCC’s Final List of Participants, and only the provisional list is currently available. The GCT will be updated once the final numbers are released by the UNFCCC. Thank you!
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WEDO has tracked data since 2008 to present the trends in women’s participation at the major negotiating meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and there is progress to note. There has been an increase in women’s participation in the process, both in overall participation as Party delegates and at the highest levels of decision-making, though this progress is inconsistent and uneven.
In 2008, the first year that the GCT collected data on Party delegations to the negotiations disaggregated by sex, COP14 had 31% women’s participation, and 82% of Party delegations had more men than women. At COP27 in 2022, very few Party delegations have equal numbers of men and women, while the majority of delegations remain dominated by men: 35% of Party delegates were women, a less than 5 percentage point improvement since 2008, and 77% of Party delegations still had more men than women.
Progress in the intersessional negotions, though, a smaller, more technical space, has been greater, particularly in recent years, with women comprising 48% of Party delegates at the June 2023 session in Bonn, compared to only 33% of the delegates at the first two intersessionals in 2008 being women.
Women’s access to and influence in UNFCCC negotiations still has some way to go before reflecting a truly gender-balanced process. Women remain widely underrepresented on the delegations of many countries, particularly in high-level positions, as well as on the delegations of countries most vulnerable to climate impacts. Certain countries, regions, and negotiating blocks are more marked than others by these tendencies.
Relevant Sources
WEDO (2012). Women’s Participation in UN Climate Negotiations, 2008-2012
WEDO (2014). Ensuring Women’s Access and Influence on Climate Change Policy, 2008-2014
WEDO (2022). Women's Participation in the UNFCCC: 2022 Report
WEDO (2023). Who Decides: Women's Participation in the UNFCCC
