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◦ Twenty years after the 1992 UN Summit in Rio, gender equality and women’s rights are still being inadequately framed as ›mainstreaming‹ concerns, rather than as a transformative necessity for the realization of sustainable development. 

◦ The recently-published report from the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Develop- ment Agenda has been criticized by the Women’s Major Group (WMG) for heighten- ing and re-orienting development toward the interests and priorities of corporations while marginalizing the concerns of women all over the world. 

◦ The processes involved in the negotiation of a new Development Agenda lack clarity concerning their mode of interaction, the question of which one will lead, and how they will frame one another. All of this hampers both the effective participation and the impact of civil society organizations and social movements. 

◦ To ensure transparent and democratic processes, feminist, women’s, human rights, environmental and social justice movements should all be given effective and mean- ingful channels of participation. It is therefore essential to strengthen and deepen the capacity of Major Groups to contribute to the creation of an inclusive, sustainable and equitable development agenda. 


This booklet is an addendum to the Field Guide for Displaced Settings. The 2003 updated UNHCR Guidelines offer advice on how to design strategies and carry out activities aimed at preventing and responding to gender-based violence. JSI/RHRC, 2004.

„The absence of women, particularly those from the global South, from national and international discussions and decision-making on climate change and development must change. The battle to protect the environment is not solely about technological innovation – it is also about empowering women and their communities to hold their governments accountable for results.‟
Mary Robinson and Wangari Maathai (Huffington Post 2010)
Why focus on gender and climate change?
Climate change is increasingly being recognised as a global crisis, but responses to it have so far been overly focused on scientific and economic solutions, rather than on the significant human and gender dimensions. This report highlights the need to put people at the centre of climate change responses, paying particular attention to the challenges and opportunities that climate change presents in the struggle for gender equality.
It advocates for an approach in which women and men have an equal voice in decision-making on climate change and broader governance processes and are given equal access to the resources necessary to respond to the negative effects of climate change; where both women‟s and men‟s needs and knowledge are taken into account and climate change policymaking institutions and processes at all levels are not biased towards men or women; and where the broad social constraints that limit women‟s access to strategic and practical3resources no longer exist.
The report shows that there is much to learn from innovative, gender-aware approaches to climate change that are already happening at the local level, led by non-governmental organisations, communities and individuals, which are leading to transformations in gender and social inequalities in some cases. National, regional and international initiatives are also playing a key role in promoting the need to integrate gender dimensions into all climate change policy and practice.

The report summarises research undertaken to understand the impact of national and regional award schemes aimed at creating greater gender equality, and their ability to stimulate gender equality and enact structural change with regard to gender equality in research institutions. The focus of this report is award schemes that recognise individual higher education/research institutions and/or departments, and which can be expected to have some impact in their aim to affect the institutional environment for academic researchers with respect to the representation and retention of women. This report considers whether each of the gender equality award schemes delivers structural change, and identifies elements of successful gender equality award schemes that could form part of a transnational award.