Women are continuing to dismantle the gender barriers they have faced in international organisations and forums, including the United Nations climate change conferences.

Without the equal participation of women in decision-making at all levels, peace and development, human rights and justice cannot be achieved.

Equal participation also ensures that women’s voices and perspectives inform policies and actions.

Participants at UN conferences of the parties (COPs) have noted that women still face gender hurdles at climate talks. Barriers to women’s equal participation at COPs include high travel costs, onerous schedules, entrenched gender norms and a lack of childcare.

Tracy Kajumba, the director of the Least Developed Countries Initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) interim secretariat and a member of the climate change research group at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), analyses these barriers from her personal experiences.

In a commentary in Climate Home News, an award-winning independent digital publication reporting on the international politics of the climate crisis, Kajumba writes: “I’ve been working on gender equity since I joined the Ugandan civil service over 20 years ago. As a young woman, I was never nominated for training even when I was qualified; male counterparts got those opportunities”.

Downplayed experiences

She recalls she was called a bully for having the guts to apply for a senior management role perceived as a man’s domain and when she reported for her first day, a senior male official offered to change her posting for fear she couldn’t manage the large division she had been allocated, proposing to transfer her somewhere “less busy”.

Most professional women, she says, have had experiences like these, which unfortunately are often downplayed or ignored.  

“My stories aren’t from a UN COP climate summit, but they easily could have been. In recent years, women have reported being the targets of similar prejudice at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – in addition to bullying and sexual harassment.”

“That’s despite 2025 marking 30 years since the Beijing Declaration for Action on women’s rights was adopted and myriad other initiatives and schemes designed to improve women’s representation at international events like COPs.

UN member states have upheld and reiterated the rights of women to full, effective and equal participation in decision-making through the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, UN General Assembly resolutions, and agreed conclusions of the Commission on the Status of Women.

Yet women remain underrepresented in all fields, especially at the highest levels, according to UN Women, the UN organisation dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Although the picture may have changed slightly in recent years, in January 2017, there were only 19 women heads of state or government, and in 2015, women ministers represented only 17 per cent of ministerial posts.

Only three women have served as President of the UN General Assembly in the past 79 sessions.

Women are also underrepresented among permanent representatives to the UN, at only around 20 per cent in New York and 27 per cent in Geneva in December 2016.

To fulfil the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 5) on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, concrete actions and intensified commitments to improve women’s participation and representation are needed.

Women face significant gender barriers in international organisations and forums, hindering their full participation and leadership.

These barriers include entrenched gender biases, lack of representation in decision-making roles, unequal access to resources and gender-based violence.

Addressing these challenges requires a multi-faceted approach focused on policy changes, cultural shifts, and increased accountability.

By addressing these barriers and implementing comprehensive strategies, international organisations can create a more inclusive and equitable environment for women, enabling their full participation and leadership in global governance.

Participation barriers

Kajumba says that efforts to address these gender barriers in international organisations and forums, including the United Nations climate change conferences, notwithstanding, it’s clear women are dealing with the same challenges today that she and other women faced two decades ago.

At COP29 in Baku, hosts Azerbaijan had an all-male team of 28 before criticism forced them to add 12 women. Only eight of the 78 world leaders who attended were women.

Overall, women made up little more than a third of COP29 delegates, suggesting there are barriers to their participation, not just within the UNFCCC process, but at the national level around the world.  

IIED conducted research on least developed countries (LDCs) to understand these barriers. Travel emerged as a huge issue. Attending COP and its preparatory meeting in Bonn is expensive for low-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

With limited travel budgets, senior officials get priority. Many women, often in junior roles, are excluded or must find funding elsewhere.

The IIED survey also noted that the divide showed women were more likely to occupy logistical, note-taking or report-writing roles while male counterparts engaged more prominently in negotiations.

Adding to the challenge of lengthy preparations and periods of meetings is the social expectation of women not to stay away from their families for too long.  

Unsurprisingly, Kajumba writes, deeply entrenched gender norms and patriarchal views still influence the structuring of jobs and power, with women considered incapable of managing complex negotiations.

One male interviewee thought women found COP “hectic”, especially in their high heels, which put them off attending future summits.

A mother of two and a frequent traveller, she knows what it’s like to leave children behind, wishing you could bring them along, only to realise there’s no enabling support system. She says it’s time for a COP crèche.

Mothers face higher travel costs, and accreditation and visas for their children are difficult to obtain, often being processed in different countries. There are no children’s services at COP.

Kajumba notes that quotas and other gender-responsive policies are often counted as a metric of success. But if they’re not actually deployed, they don’t work. While many LDCs have policies that support gender equity, implementation at scale is weak.

Some LDCs are addressing this problem. Rwanda has a gender monitoring office tackling how policies and laws are put into effect.

Mozambique is supporting female participation with experienced women negotiators mentoring up-and-coming officials.

Sierra Leone is creating a transparent nomination process that builds on its national gender and Empowerment Act, which stipulates 30 per cent female representation.

These issues affect women globally. IIED supports the LDCs at COP and hosts the interim secretariat for the group’s initiative on climate change adaptation (LIFE-AR), whose research Kajumba hopes should inform efforts to improve women’s representation worldwide.

COP29 last year was rattled when former leaders declared the negotiations “not fit for purpose” and called for a major rethink. Such large-scale reform will involve painful geopolitical wrangling.  

“These are less complicated changes we can and should implement now that will make UNFCC summits more relevant and representative for everyone”, ensuring COP lives to the UN’s 2030 goal of ‘leaving no one behind’.