Promoting gender equality in responses to climate change: the case of Kenya

The recent UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Cancun, Mexico, was able to demonstrate, among other achievements, that the importance of gender in climate change responses is increasingly being acknowledged. Climate change affects women and men differently and both women and men have different resources and experiences at their disposal to deal with climate change (including climate variability). It is therefore important that climate change responses are gender sensitive in order to effectively reduce vulnerability and build adaptive capacity. However, despite the increasing attention paid to gender in climate change policy and discourse, it is equally important to analyse how gender is actually being mainstreamed in the practice of responding to climate change at national and local levels.