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This set of policy briefs seeks to address some of the most pressing policy issues concerning gender and climate change, by drawing on the extensive experience of each contributing partner organization. Our hope is that the concise and empirically grounded recommendations in each brief can provide guidance to policy makers and programmers to better identify and address gender issues in climate policy and action.

The briefs focus on a number of pressing issues such as gender equality in climate change adaptation and mitigation, gender- responsive financing, and gender-sensitive monitoring of sustainable development achievements.

We also report on the status of gender integration in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations as we enter the 21st Conference of Parties, and highlight the measures that need to be taken to ensure the new global agreement reduces women’s vulnerability and promotes the goals of gender equality. 

The problem

Farmers’ own seed systems are at the heart of food security. These systems are currently under stress due to political, social, economic and environmental changes. Women farmers play key roles in these systems. However, they are often overlooked by researchers and development personnel, policies and programs. 

Context

Almost everywhere, local seed systems – from selection, to storage, production, distribution and exchange − are under stress. Agricultural modernization (for example, substitution of local varieties with hybrids), privatization of natural resources and the strong concentration and expansion of corporate power in the life science industries (including the seed industry) are contributing to a decline in collective local management of plant genetic resources for both conservation and sustainable use. Many farming households have become more individualized in terms of decision-making and use of knowledge, labor, capital and seeds. 

Key messages

• Women farmers play key roles in local seed systems although they are often overlooked by researchers and development personnel, policies and programs.

• Climate change is putting pressure on farmers’ seed and food production systems, often resulting in different impacts on women and men.

• Crop and varietal conservation and diversification can be effective adaptation strategies to respond to changing farming conditions and increased uncertainty.

• Women are at the forefront of implementing such new strategies, but more attention and support are needed from research and development agencies and from practitioners. 

1.1.1. Cities and gender

The gender dimension of human settlements as an issue of research, advocacy and urban policy has a long history. The Habitat Agenda includes various provisions on gender, and the gender dimensions of the main issues related to human settlements have been addressed, such as urban poverty and gender, housing, land and property rights of women, water and sanitation,6 gender mainstreaming and the involvement of women in local government. The response of city networks includes guidebooks and commitments to gender equality in the city.

1.1.2. Cities and climate change

Cities have recognised their crucial role in climate change policy for the last 20 years or so, even before the UNFCCC was adopted by the international community. During the first half the 1990s, local governments started to take up the challenge, adopted commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, built networks, and started to implement climate policy at the local level. Except for a small number of publications, researchers took up the issue much later. Since then, substantial research on cities and climate change has been done, and their crucial role both for mitigation and adaptation is well acknowledged. It should be noted that the pioneers in this field were mainly cities from developed countries who were working on mitigation, while in developing countries climate policy at the city level is still an emerging issue and is mainly focused on adaptation.

1.1.3. Gender and climate change

While the gender and environment nexus in general has been an issue for many years, the climate change and gender nexus has only started to receive attention during the last decade. A number of publications have analysed the various connections, in particular the differentiated impacts of climate change, the absence of women in climate policy, but also the role women could play if fully involved. This emerging topic was pushed forward by 

women’s organisations and supported by development organisations that are familiar with the connection between gender and poverty, lack of access to energy and water, and other problems that are aggravated by the impacts of climate change.

As for vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, poverty plays a major role. Due to the living conditions of the poor, they are often more exposed to hazards, and have fewer options to avoid, or cope with, the impacts. As, according to UNDP, more than 70 per cent of the world’s poor are female, the share of women among the most vulnerable is dis- proportionably high. Moreover, there are additional factors indicating that vulnerability involves heavy gender differentials that need to be taken into consideration.  

Thus, all three linkages between climate change, gender and cities are well established and substantiated by practice and research findings. However, it has not yet been discussed how these three inter-linkages work together, and how cities and other players need to respond to the complexity of the whole picture. This paper is an attempt to take stock of existing knowledge, identify gaps, and produce preliminary recommendations to policy-makers at urban, national and international levels.

At the local level, a range of inequalities and injustices are directly apparent and tangible. In most cities around the world, the divide between the privileged and underprivileged is as large as the global divide between developed and least developed countries. While a small proportion of citizens claim the major share of land for housing, mobility and recreation, the majority of others are crowded together in slums. The size of the carbon footprints of different citizens ranges from very large to virtually zero. The poorest groups, such as slum dwellers, usually have the smallest carbon footprint, and, moreover, they often live in areas most exposed to climate hazards, such as landslide or flood prone areas.

These inequalities are related to income, class, age, race, ethnicity, health status, etc. Within all this inequalities, gender leads to a further differentiation, and in most cases, leads to different impacts of climate change on women and men. ‘Within low-income populations, women often have particular vulnerabilities as a result of gender-related inequalities’. 

Over the past few decades, global research has shown that gender inequalities can give rise to health inequities between men and women and between boys and girls. A grow- ing body of evidence also indicates that climate change is already causing negative health impacts, mainly felt by the most vulnerable populations, usually living in countries where the health system is less resilient to climate variability and change. Consequently, when climate change interacts with gender inequalities, it results in more pronounced negative health impacts in one sex over the other.

Indeed, the available literature shows that climate-related impacts on health are exces- sively affecting women, influencing and exacerbating existing social determinants of health such as poverty and illiteracy. In many communities, women tend to have less access to the resources that could help them overcome existing vulnerabilities; are more likely to be reliant on climate-sensitive resources and livelihoods; and tend to have lower levels of meaningful participation in climate change adaptation processes. This premise is supported by data showing that natural disasters continue to kill more women than men, and kill women at a younger age. These gender differences appear to be greater in more severe disasters, and where women have relatively lower socioeconomic status than that of men. On the other hand, there is evidence that men are more affected in some situations. In Australia and India, for example, male rural farmers suffered men- tal illness in the aftermath of droughts, and subsequent increases in the rates of suicides were seen.

To effectively mitigate the different adverse health effects of climate change on women and men, it is imperative to employ scaled adaptation approaches that mainstream gen- der in all climate change and health programmes. These approaches must tackle gender inequality directly, moving towards empowering vulnerable groups as active agents of change instead of regarding them as passive in relation to climate change challenges.

This guide is targeted towards programme managers who work in climate change and health adaptation, and provides them with practical information and concrete guidance to mainstream gender throughout all four phases of the project cycle: identification, formulation and design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. In order to effectively mainstream gender within their health adaptation to climate change pro- grammes, managers will learn to conduct a gender analysis of health vulnerability and adverse health impacts of climate change, and to design gender-responsive adaptation programmes and actions, thanks to the practical and programmatic recommendations included in Section 3.

The guide is divided into three sections:

1. What is gender and why does it matter?
2. Understanding gender dimensions of climate change and health.
3. Mainstreaming gender in health adaptation to climate change programmes. 

The first section draws on the World Health Organization (WHO) Gender mainstream- ing manual for health managers and explains key terms and concepts important for understanding how gender and other social determinants influence health outcomes. It introduces principles of gender mainstreaming and the rationale for integrating gender considerations within health adaptation strategies.

The second section explores how biological and sociocultural factors (gender norms, roles and relations) and access to and control over resources influence vulnerability to health risks associated with climate change, and the adaptive capacity of groups and individuals to adjust to changing environments and their social and economic impacts.

The third section is also adapted from the Gender mainstreaming manual for health managers, and provides practical guidance and best practices for mainstreaming gender in health adaptation to climate change programmes. This section presents a set of tools and recommendations to support programme managers conduct a gender analysis and adequately mainstream gender within all phases of the project cycle. 

This report explores the complexities of adding ethnicity and gender to an analysis of socio- economic Status (SES) gaps. It considers some of the ways in which gender, ethnicity and SES interact with education to produce or reduce social mobility. It then explores a vast body of research into how young people’s longer term social mobility depends on how educational outcomes at schools translate into participation and achievement in Higher Education and the labour market. For each of our key findings, we recommend questions for future research and areas in urgent need of policy interventions. 

Key findings include:

1. A White British vulnerability to school underperformance. 

Although in every ethnic group, those eligible for Free School Meals, (FSM, a key indicator of SES), underperform compared to their more affluent peers, White British and White Other children from low income homes are the lowest performing groups at primary school. White British pupils also make the least progress throughout secondary school resulting in a worsening in their performance by key stage four. The socio-economic attainment gap is largest amongst White British pupils at all Key Stages and this trend may reflect particularly wide disparities in household incomes amongst non-FSM pupils from this ethnic group.

• In the early years the socio-economic gap is larger for ‘White British’ and ‘White Other’ groups than other minority ethnic groups.

• Disadvantaged ‘White British’ and ‘White Other’ pupils are the lowest performing groups at primary and secondary school. During secondary school, disadvantaged White British pupils make slower progress and therefore fall further behind.

• At all key stages, these groups perform least highly of all ethnic groups in English. Until Key Stage 4 it is ‘Other White’ eligible pupils who perform most poorly however at Key Stage 4 these pupils do better than their eligible White British peers.

• In Maths, as in English, the same trend applies, with the exception of Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) where FSM eligible Pakistani/Bangladeshi pupils also perform poorly.

• Disadvantaged young people from White British backgrounds are the least likely to access

  Higher Education, with only 1 in 10 of the poorest attending university, compared to 3 in 10 for Black Caribbean children, 5 in 10 for Bangladeshis and nearly 7 in 10 amongst lowest income Chinese students.

• Despite this, ethnic minority groups experience higher unemployment rates compared to White British groups. 

2. A Black penalty in secondary and higher education.

​Despite starting school ahead with performance largely in line with national averages, Black children fail to show this advantage higher up the age range. They are the ethnic group most likely to fail their Maths GCSE, most likely to be excluded from school and one of the least likely groups to achieve a good degree at university. Black boys do substantially less well than their female peers particularly at Key Stage 4. Furthermore, granular analysis of different Black sub-groups (for example Black African cf. Black Caribbean) has also shown distinctive patterns in achievement.

• Black children now enter school with levels of literacy and numeracy that are largely in line

  with the average child in the UK – 67 and 75 per cent achieving a good level at age 5 in literacy and numeracy respectively, compared to the national average of 69 and 76 per cent.

• Yet by the end of primary school, Black pupils are beginning to fall behind the national average in maths, particularly boys. While 77 per cent of pupils achieve expected levels nationally, for Black pupils this is 74 per cent and for Black boys, only 73 per cent.

• Secondary school is where Black pupils’ attainment falls behind substantially and by age of

  16, Black students are the ethnic group least likely to achieve a C in their Maths GCSE – only 63 per cent attaining this level, compared to a national average of 68 per cent. For Black boys this is worse, at 60 per cent.

• At Key Stage 5, Black pupils are the ethnic group with the lowest outcomes. The low GCSE attainment translates into strikingly low attainment in Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) A-levels at Key Stage 5.

• At university Black students are particularly vulnerable to dropping out and attaining poorly. They are also less than half as likely to get a First as their white counterparts and more than 1 in 10 Black university students drop out of their HE course in their first year. 

3. A broken mobility promise for Asian Muslims, particularly women.

Young people from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds are more likely than ever to succeed in education and go on to university, girls even more so than boys. Yet these outcomes are not yet being translated into labour market returns – with unemployment particularly prevalent amongst Bangladeshi women, and both Pakistani men and women are relatively unlikely to secure managerial or professional occupations.

• There has been an increase in educational attainment for Pakistani/Bangladeshi pupils and their performance has improved at a more rapid rate than other ethnic groups in recent years at almost every key stage of education. Almost half of Bangladeshi and over a third of Pakistani young people from the poorest quintile go to university.

• However, this is not yet reflected in labour market outcomes, particularly for women, where British Bangladeshi and Pakistani women earn less than their counterparts from other ethnic minority groups

• Despite achieving higher qualifications at school than their male counterparts, female Bangladeshi graduates are less likely to gain managerial and professional roles than male Bangladeshi graduates.

• Discrimination in the workplace puts some groups, in particular Muslim women, at a disadvantage preventing them from translating educational attainment into labour market returns.

• A range of factors give rise to these differences including cultural norms, family and individual expectations, as well as geography and discrimination. 

4. Female underperformance in STEM subjects.

In recent years girls’ outperformance of boys in examinations has frequently been highlighted with girls more likely to participate in Higher Education and more likely to achieve higher grades. However, our analysis shows that this pattern is broken when it comes to Maths attainment and in STEM subjects. In these areas, both genders perform more similarly and in some cases (such as Key Stage 2 Maths), boys outperform girls. This trend may contribute towards highly gendered post-16 subject choices and careers, with females for example much less likely to take STEM A-levels. Whilst males’ subject choices are also gendered, low uptake of STEM subjects by females may constrain their social mobility. We found:

• In Maths and English, girls outperform boys throughout primary and secondary school apart from in Maths at Key Stage 2, where poorer girls in particular lag behind boys.

• Females and males now perform similarly in STEM subjects with boys increasing their performance over recent years. However, girls are less likely to take these subjects.

• At all Key Stages in Maths and English, attainment has increased the most amongst FSM pupils, particularly amongst FSM girls in Maths.