Pushback on gender equality, climate change convergence
By Alberto Leny, August 1, 2025Thirty-two years ago, all nations of the world signed an international treaty to address the issue of climate change.
Known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 1992 treaty aims to stabilise greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.
Among critical issues the treaty aims to address is gender equality and climate change, which are deeply intertwined but whose commitments currently face pushback.
Climate change disproportionately affects women and girls, particularly in developing countries, due to existing social, economic, and political inequalities. Women’s leadership and participation are crucial for effective climate action and sustainable development.
According to the UNFCCC climate change action plan, to limit global warming to 1.5°C, GHG emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43 per cent by 2030.
This goal, reinforced by the UNFCCC’s 198 member states in the Paris Agreement of 2015, remains elusive. Last year (2024) was the hottest year on record following nine record-breaking years of heat over the past decade.
Climate scientists early this year announced that the Earth’s average temperature increased to more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time in 2024, breaching the threshold in the Paris Agreement to avert the worst effects of global warming, and sending ominous signals.
Bad records
Last year’s unprecedented temperatures fuelled heatwaves, drought, wildfires, storms and floods that killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.
A report by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), which monitors global temperatures, highlighted the urgency of moving away from planet-heating fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
“Every broken record was not just a number, but accompanied by people losing their lives and livelihoods in ever hotter heatwaves and devastating floods. Yet new oil and gas fields continue to open with increase in subsidies as fossil fuel emissions reach an all-time high,” said WWA co-lead Dr Friederike Otto.
Climate change has a greater impact on those sections of the population, in all countries, that are most reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods and have the least capacity to respond to natural hazards, such as droughts, landslides, floods and hurricanes.
UNFCCC member states recognise the importance of involving women and men equally in the development and implementation of national climate policies that are gender-responsive. They established a dedicated agenda item under the Convention addressing issues of gender and climate change and included overarching text in the Paris Agreement.
Women commonly face higher risks and greater burdens from the impacts of climate change in situations of poverty, and the majority of the world’s poor are women.
Women and girls face disproportionate impacts from climate change. They are also driving climate solutions at all levels – as farmers, workers, consumers, household managers, activists, leaders, and entrepreneurs.
The climate crisis does not affect everyone equally. Women and girls face disproportionate impacts from climate change — largely because they make up the majority of the world’s poor, who are highly dependent on local natural resources for their livelihood.
Women’s unequal participation in decision-making processes and labour markets compound inequalities and often prevent women from fully contributing to climate-related planning, policy-making and implementation.
Yet women can, and do, play a critical role in response to climate change due to their local knowledge of and leadership in, for instance, sustainable resource management or leading sustainable practices at the household and community level.
Women’s participation at the political level has resulted in greater responsiveness to citizen’s needs, often increasing cooperation across party and ethnic lines and delivering more sustainable peace.
Women’s inclusion at the local leadership level has led to improved outcomes of climate related projects and policies. If policies or projects are implemented without women’s meaningful participation they can increase existing inequalities and decrease effectiveness.
Delay tactics
At UN Climate Change Conference (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, member states decided to develop a new Gender Action Plan, which was to be initiated at last month’s mid-year negotiations in Bonn, Germany, to recommend adoption at COP 30 in Brazil this November.
The plan sets out objectives and activities under five priority areas that aim to advance knowledge and understanding of gender-responsive climate action and its coherent mainstreaming in the implementation of the UNFCCC, as well as women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in the UNFCCC process.
However, experts have reported a backlash on gender and climate commitments. Last month, both the G7 Summit and the climate negotiations in Bonn fell short of reaffirming strong commitments to gender equality and climate ambition, echoing a broader erosion of gender norms and a resurgence of delay tactics stalling urgently needed climate progress.
In a commentary in the latest issue of the authoritative UK-based Climate Home News digital publication, Amy Cano Prentice and Brianna Craft note this setback saying leaders must stand by past commitments and make progress on expected actions – like adopting a new Gender Action Plan at COP30.
“The current political climate – marked by rising anti-rights sentiment and broader backlash against feminist and LGBTQI+ inclusion – creates fertile ground for regression on international commitments by states around the world,” they assert.
They also express concerns about trade relations and national security having moved climate to the backseat, as has a resurgence of climate disinformation and ‘delayism’. The result, they add, is that the handful of developed and developing countries that champion both gender equality and climate ambition are now fighting fires on two fronts in international processes.
“Rising geopolitical tensions and conflict threaten international cooperation, without which countries cannot effectively address the climate crisis and exacerbating gender inequalities,” Prentice and Craft state.
Their recent research ‘Gender Equality and The Climate Crisis: Where Do International Commitments Stand?’ documents the pledges that bring together gender and climate from 2022 to 2024 across three international forums.
The research found that the G7, G20 and UN climate negotiations all recognise that the climate crisis disproportionately impacts women and thus climate action needs a gendered lens. All three forums make commitments to act on the nexus of gender equality and climate ambition.
“Our goal is to provide a baseline against which future progress and/or pushback on gender equality and climate action can be charted,” they say.
Leaders across forums also agree that the full, meaningful and equal participation of women in climate decision-making is vital. Commitments towards this are most specific in the UNFCCC negotiations. Those negotiations track gendered participation – in 2024, women accounted for 35 per cent of COP delegates – and call for countries to appoint and provide support for National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points.
“We see a type of pushback and norm-spoiling to undermine the legitimacy of gender equality gaining traction across international spaces,” write Prentice and Craft.
In advance of COP30 and the G20 summit in November, they say their focus will be on both understanding how anti-feminist and climate-delaying forces are converging at national and international levels, and how to support those committed to progress in this new era of international relations with data.