Gender-responsive strategies on climate change: recent progress and ways forward for donors

Neither the impacts of climate change on people nor the ways in which people respond to climate change are gender-neutral. Gender inequalities and different gender roles, needs and preferences which vary over space and over time influence the different ways in which young, adult and elderly males and females experience the impacts of climate change and develop strategies to adapt to or mitigate them. Gender equality is both a development goal in itself – reflected, for example, in the third Millennium Development Goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment, the Beijing Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) – and a condition for the achievement of sustainable development. As such, gender equality is also a condition for successful adaptation to climate change, and the successful transition to low-carbon pathways in developing countries.