Another albatross is positioned around the woman's neck
Abstract:
Climate change
disproportionately affects women, particularly in regions like Southeast Asia
and Africa, where recent severe disasters have worsened food insecurity,
reduced water availability, and increased disease. As primary contributors to
agriculture and food processing—up to 70% of farmers and 80% of
processors—women face greater challenges due to limited access to resources
like land, finance, education, and insurance. Despite its global reach, climate
change remains a heavier burden for women, impacting their daily sustenance and
livelihoods.
Photo credit: ChatGPT Jul
6, 2025,06_02_00AM
Historical disadvantages: Climate change is a major global challenge of the 21st century,
with severe impacts on the environment, economy, and society. Women in rural
areas of developing countries are especially vulnerable due to their dependence
on natural resources for daily needs like food, water, and energy. Climate
change—through droughts, storms, and deforestation—makes access to these
resources more difficult. Historical inequalities, such as limited
decision-making power and access to assets, further disadvantage women compared
to men. As those with lower adaptive capacities, people in poverty—particularly
women and girls—will be most affected by climate change’s widespread and
unequal impacts.
Unpredictability and
scarcity: Climate change
threatens all aspects of food security—availability, access, utilization, and
stability—impacting women disproportionately. Women produce 45–80% of food in
developing countries and form a large share of the agricultural workforce,
especially in Africa. As climate change disrupts traditional food sources,
women face income loss, food scarcity, and rising prices, which worsen their
health more than men's during shortages. Additionally, women often lack access
to land and decision-making power. Ensuring rural women’s rights, equal
resource access, and participation in decisions is essential for addressing
food security in a changing climate.
Agro-ecosystem: Global warming is projected to significantly reduce maize
production—by up to 10% globally and 20–25% in major producers like Brazil,
Nigeria, and South Africa—threatening food security in developing countries.
This will particularly impact women, who are often the last to eat in
households and rely on maize for both family sustenance and income. Advanced
climate models predict annual losses of 10 million tons, enough to feed 140
million people. Subsistence women farmers in sub-Saharan Africa will be
especially vulnerable, as they face the dual burden of climate impacts and
limited capacity to cope with drought and economic shocks.
Environmental
degradation: In rural Africa
and Asia, both men and women rely heavily on biomass for energy and
livelihoods, but climate change and declining biodiversity are making these
resources harder to access. This loss affects not only material well-being but
also health, security, and social stability—especially for poor communities.
Women and girls, who are primarily responsible for gathering fuel like wood,
face increasing burdens as deforestation pushes resources farther away. This
physically demanding task reduces their time for education, income generation,
and rest, while exposing them to greater risks of injury and gender-based
violence. The cycle of disempowerment continues as girls are often pulled from
school to help, deepening gender inequality.
Social exclusion: Climate change is severely affecting freshwater sources, making
water less available and more contaminated—especially impacting women, who are
primarily responsible for household water management in developing countries.
Women and girls often spend hours fetching water from distant, unsafe sources,
exposing them to health risks and poor sanitation. Contamination, such as
arsenic in groundwater worsened by flooding, leads to serious health issues and
social stigma, particularly for women. These effects not only threaten women's
health and dignity but also strain agricultural production, livestock care, and
increase the overall labor burden for water collection and use.
Morbidity and mortality: Climate change poses serious health risks through increased
heatwaves, floods, droughts, and extreme weather events, which raise morbidity
and mortality rates. It also heightens the spread of infectious diseases like
malaria, cholera, dengue, and diarrhoea, especially as warmer temperatures
expand the habitat and lifespan of disease-carrying vectors such as mosquitoes.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria is already widespread, climate change is
likely to worsen its impact, spreading it to new regions. Poor communities,
particularly women, are most affected—not only through direct health impacts
but also as caregivers burdened by the rise in illness. This adds to their
responsibilities and deepens poverty, with studies showing a strong link
between climate variability and disease outbreaks, and between malaria
prevalence and lower national economic performance.
A
study by Prof. Md. Al-Mamun of BRAC University highlights the heightened risk
of cervical cancer among female fish collectors in the saline-affected coastal
areas of southwestern Bangladesh. Key contributing factors include long-term
exposure to climate change impacts, saline water intrusion, poor health
awareness, lack of gynecological care, social marginalization, and inadequate
access to clean water and menstrual hygiene. The study emphasizes how
environmental stressors, combined with social and health system gaps, increase
health vulnerabilities for these women, illustrating the intersection of
climate change and gender-specific health risks.
The
ripple effect: impacts of climate change on menstrual health and paths to
resilience: Girls and women face heightened health risks from climate
change, particularly concerning their sexual and reproductive health and rights
(SRHR), including menstrual health and hygiene (MHH)—an area often overlooked
in climate discussions. Climate change disrupts access to menstrual products,
safe sanitation, health services, and information, while also worsening
menstrual disorders and intensifying existing inequalities. This leads to
negative impacts on girls’ education, women’s workforce participation, gender
equality, and self-confidence, while also increasing vulnerability to
gender-based violence.
Despite being essential
for health and dignity, MHH remains under-prioritized in climate policies. Only
a fraction of national climate commitments address SRHR, and less than 1%
mention MHH. In contrast, water and sanitation services—vital to MHH—are
increasingly acknowledged. Low- and middle-income countries, which contribute
least to climate change, suffer the most from its impacts, making it critical
to understand how both rapid and gradual climate events affect MHH.
Strengthening climate-resilient MHH responses—including better facilities,
products, education, and social support—is essential for advancing health,
rights, and gender equity in the face of the climate crisis.
Calamitous human rights: Climate change has profound implications for women's human
rights, exacerbating global hunger, malnutrition, disease, and water scarcity.
It threatens basic economic and social rights—including access to food, health,
housing, and livelihoods—particularly through extreme weather events and
displacement. Women, especially in vulnerable communities, face
disproportionate impacts. As climate change continues to challenge humanity,
protecting the human rights of those most affected—especially women—has become
a key priority for the United Nations.
Climate sensitive
industries: Climate change affects people globally, but the poor—especially
women—are the most vulnerable due to their heavy reliance on climate-sensitive
industries like agriculture, fisheries, and tourism. These sectors form a
significant part of national GDPs, particularly in developing countries where
agriculture alone contributes around 13%, compared to just 2% in developed
nations. Africa is identified as the most climate-vulnerable region due to its
fragile economies and socio-economic conditions. Increasingly frequent extreme
weather events such as floods, droughts, and cyclones are severely impacting
Africa’s economic, social, and environmental systems, further deepening
inequality and poverty.
In the name of men: Most women in developing countries live in rural,
climate-sensitive areas where poverty is most severe. These women, often
illiterate and lacking access to technology, training, health care, and
information, are further marginalized by limited ownership of productive assets
like land and capital—even when legal frameworks have evolved. Historically,
colonial peasantization forced women into low-status agrarian roles, making up
90% of agricultural workers, yet without control over land, seeds, or income.
Men dominated the formal economy, marketing cash crops like maize and cotton,
while women were confined to subsistence farming, reinforcing their economic
exclusion and deepening cycles of poverty.
Climate refugees: Rising sea
levels, increasing salinity, and extreme weather events are devastating
livelihoods in vulnerable regions like the Sundarbans and Odisha, leading to
significant climate-induced migration. In areas such as the Indian Sundarbans
and around Chilika Lake, agricultural and fishing communities are losing their
means of survival, forcing thousands to migrate—temporarily or permanently—in
search of work. India is expected to face the displacement of 45 million people
by 2050 due to climate disasters, making it one of the world’s most affected
countries.
Women and girls are
especially impacted. Migration and climate disasters disrupt access to menstrual
health and hygiene (MHH) services, including safe menstrual products, clean
water, and private sanitation facilities. Damage to WASH infrastructure, supply
chains, and schools restricts menstrual management, often forcing girls and
women to use unsafe or unhygienic materials. Social taboos worsen these
challenges, particularly in disaster-affected regions like Pakistan during the
2022 floods. Slow-onset changes, such as rising salinity and droughts, further
reduce water availability, disproportionately burdening women and girls with
water collection responsibilities, often at the cost of their own health and
dignity. Climate resilience strategies must address these gendered
vulnerabilities to ensure inclusive and equitable adaptation efforts.
Gender-sensitive strategies: Women are more vulnerable to climate change than men,
particularly in developing countries, because they make up the majority of the
poor and rely heavily on natural resources for their livelihoods. Social,
economic, and political barriers—such as limited access to resources,
decision-making, and mobility—further reduce their ability to cope with climate
impacts. Rural women, responsible for securing essentials like water, food, and
fuel, face the greatest burdens as climate change threatens these resources.
Therefore, gender-sensitive strategies are essential to effectively address the
environmental and humanitarian challenges brought on by climate change.
Conclusion: “Men grow cold / As girls grow old, / And we all lose our charms
in the end. / But square-cut or pear-shaped, / These rocks don't lose their
shape./ Diamonds are a girl's best
friend”. [Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" from Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes (1953) words by Jule Styne and music by Leo Robin].
It is not
the diamonds, but in fact, since the beginning of human civilization, the
environment has been women's best friend. This means that the manpower of a
nation is seriously threatened when breadwinners die; therefore, it is vital
for policymakers to be aware of such crucial information.
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Authors Details:
Eliza and Chandan are
storytellers, travelers, photographers, and seekers—united by a deep obsession
with self-improvement and inner growth. While Eliza, an author-illustrator
based in Berlin, Germany, crafts narratives from her charming old-city
apartment and works in IT-enabled services, Chandan, an author and researcher,
serves in a state-owned PSU in West Bengal, India. Both are driven by a shared
personal mission: to help people realize their potential and ascend to higher
levels of consciousness—gently, ethically, and without harm to others or to
nature.
We respect different socio-cultural-ethnic group across the world despite
of their caste, creed and financial-so called social status.
Authors’
Contributions Authors have contributed equally to the study process and the
development of the manuscript.
Declaration In order to
correct and improve the academic writing of our paper, we have used the
language model Ginger.
Transparency
Statement Data are available for study purposes upon reasonable request
to the corresponding author.
Acknowledgments We would like to
express our gratitude to all individuals helped us to study this.
Generative AI
statement We acknowledge the use of ChatGPT
(https://chat.openai.com/) to refine the academic language and accuracy of my
own work. We submitted our entire essay and
entered on 6 July 2025: Improve the academic tone and accuracy of language,
including grammatical structures, punctuation and vocabulary.
The authors declare that no Generative AI was used in the creation of
this manuscript unless otherwise mentioned.
Declaration of
Interest The authors declare that the
research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial
relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Funding The study had no sponsorship.
Ethical
Considerations In this study, ethical standards including obtaining informed consent,
ensuring privacy and confidentiality were observed.
Publisher’s Note All
claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not
necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the
publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in
this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed
or endorsed by the publisher.
P.S.: If interested, for a detailed version, please contact E-mail: weism09022025@gmail.com
Another albatross
is positioned around the woman's neck © 2025 by Chandan Bandyopadhyay &
Elija Gayen is licensed under Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. To view a copy of this
license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
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