Thirty years ago, the Beijing Declaration marked a global pledge to gender equality across 12 key areas (education, health, economics, politics, etc.). India has since enacted progressive laws like the Domestic Violence Act and POSH Act. However, implementation often falls short on the ground.Women, especially in climate-vulnerable regions, face persistent inequalities.

Beijing+30 India Report

• The Beijing+30 India Report (2024) misses a critical lens: the intersection of gender and climate change.
• This omission is a lost opportunity. Integrating a climate-gender perspective is essential for India’s future sustainability, resilience, and human rights protections, especially for rural and indigenous communities.

How Climate Change Deepens Gender Inequality

• Disproportionate Impacts on Rural Women and Girls: In India’s rural areas, women already face systemic inequalities — limited access to land, healthcare, education, and decision-making. Climate change exacerbates these vulnerabilities:
  • Health Risks: Extreme heat, droughts, and malnutrition impact maternal and menstrual health; rising infertility and hysterectomies are becoming more common.
  • Livelihood Loss: Erratic weather damages crops and non-farm income streams, resulting in up to 33% income losses.
  • Migration and Displacement: Climate stressors force families to migrate, pushing girls out of school and increasing risks of exploitation.
• Climate-Induced Unpaid Care Work: Scarce resources increase the burden of unpaid work — fetching water, gathering fuel — disproportionately on women. 
  • A recent Arsht-Rock report notes Indian women already spend over eight hours a day on unpaid work (a staggering 71% unpaid work hours), projected to rise to 8.3 hours by 2050 without climate action.

Health, Violence, and Policy on Climate Change

• Despite their crucial role, women remain largely invisible in climate policies. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
  • Just 6% of climate policies globally mention women.
  • Only 1% address the needs of people in poverty.
  • Women farmers — who make up a significant agricultural workforce — receive minimal representation.
• Climate finance, too, often sidelines women’s realities, focusing on clean energy and green transport rather than the gendered impacts of climate stressors.
• Alarming Health Statistics: Over 50% of pregnant women in India are anaemic.
  • Food insecurity, worsened by climate shocks, makes women 1.6 times more likely to suffer from anaemia.
• Climate and Intimate Partner Violence: A chilling correlation; each 1°C rise in temperature corresponds to an 8% increase in physical violence and 7.3% in sexual violence, especially in countries like India with already high rates of intimate partner violence.

Women as Agents of Adaptation and Resilience

Despite their exclusion from policy, women are at the forefront of climate adaptation:

• Indigenous women conserve climate-resilient seeds and manage local ecosystems.
• Women’s collectives enhance food security, share workloads, and lead community resilience efforts.
• For urban women, issues like pollution and waste management dominate, while indigenous women focus on the three ‘M’s:
  • Mahua (forest-based livelihoods)
  • Mao (security amid resource conflicts)
  • Migration (distress-led displacement)

Way Forward

• Mainstream Gender in Climate Frameworks: Integrate gender into National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC), and local-level climate action.
  • Create gender-responsive indicators and build robust data systems to capture the gendered impacts of climate change.
• Prioritise Climate-Responsive Budgeting: Move beyond tokenism and avoid greenwashing.
  • Develop and implement gender-audited climate budgets to track real impact and ensure equitable resource distribution.

• Establish Local Support Systems: Support rural women through platforms for participation in climate decision-making.
  • Climate Support Hubs: Offer disaster response, sexual and reproductive health services, legal aid, and migration awareness.
• Skilling, Livelihoods, and Leadership: Diversify livelihoods to reduce reliance on climate-sensitive sectors.
  • Promote non-farm skilling tailored to climate challenges.
  • Fund women-led green businesses and technological innovations.
  • Invest in Women as Human Capital
• Women are not just victims of climate change—they are key actors in driving solutions.
  • Advantages: Closing the gender gap in farming resources could boost crop production by 20% to 30%, helping feed an extra 100 to 150 million people.
• Role of the Private Sector and Global Partnerships: Private companies can:
  • Fund gender-inclusive climate projects
  • Support women’s access to resilient technologies
  • Encourage inclusive hiring and green entrepreneurship
• Collaborative efforts among government, civil society, research institutions, private sector, and international organisations must:
  • Foster knowledge sharing and capacity building
  • Highlight women climate champions
  • Enable collective advocacy for inclusive climate governance

Conclusion

To build a just and sustainable future, India must centre women’s voices, experiences, and leadership in its climate narrative. Climate change is not gender-neutral — and neither should our response be.

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