Weathering the storm or storming the norms? Moving gender equality forward in climate-resilient agriculture

Abstract

Resilient or vulnerable? What do we know about women, gender equality, and agriculture under climate change? Much is known about the effects of climate change on women, and most research on the topic focuses on women's greater vulnerability as a result of their reliance on natural resources, lower access to resources and information, and gender and social norms which inhibit their ability to take action and participate in making household and community decisions. Less attention is given to women's active role as agents of change, their knowledge and capacity to respond to climate impacts, or tackling of the causes of vulnerability (Dankelman 2010; MacGregor 2010; Perez et al. 2015; Huyer et al. 2015). In the area of agricultural climate adaptation, Davidson (2016) noted that research on gender has primarily focused on barriers to adaptation for women to date, finding that women-headed farming households tend to be more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and women in all types of households are relatively more vulnerable as well. Women farmers are less likely to adopt adaptation strategies due to financial and resource limitations and less control over land (see Jost et al. 2016;

Are women neglected in the EU agriculture? Evidence from Lithuanian young farmers

“…The revealed higher women’s proneness to innovation and interest in expanding activities beyond the traditional agricultural domain, compared to men is of utmost important in ensuring long-term economic sustainability of agricultural sector, as multi-level diversification of products, activities, financial sources of economic actors is essential ( Pugh, 2001 ; Li et al, 2005 ; Moussa et al, 2018 ). Higher environmental awareness of women is also considered important, as it not only creates preconditions for more easily adapting climate-smart agriculture techniques ( Huyer and Partey, 2019 ) in Lithuanian agriculture, but also can help mitigate one of the negative consequences of the CAP payments – increasing land degradation ( Panagos et al, 2016 ). These findings at some point contradict Theriault et al (2017) and support those by Ngigi et al (2017) .…”

Exploring Women’s Differentiated Access to Climate-Smart Agricultural Interventions in Selected Climate-Smart Villages of Latin America

“…In the Global North [19] as in the Global South [20], women and men have been portrayed as having gender differentiated roles, preferences, needs, and challenges that are important to consider in order to design gender-responsive interventions that help them adapt to climate change. Climate change is expected to widen the gender inequalities that already exist in the agricultural sector [21]. These pre-existing gender inequalities in the agricultural sector include, for example, differences in the access to, and ownership of, productive assets [22,23], in the access to extension services and agricultural productivity [24], and in decision-making power [25,26], among others.…”

Women’s empowerment and farmland allocations in Bangladesh: evidence of a possible pathway to crop diversification

“…Knowledge about the effects of climate change on women (Jost et al 2016;Chanana-Nag and Aggarwal 2020) and their vulnerable status (Perez et al 2015;Huyer et al 2015) is mounting. However, while it is now established that gender-related barriers can limit households' capacity to adapt to climate change (McKinley et al 2018;Huyer and Partey 2020), more attention must be given to women's active role in adaptation. Women's empowerment is documented to influence agricultural technical efficiency and spending choices, the sourcing and preparing of foods, diet quality and dietary diversity, and households' nutrition outcomes (Seymour 2017;Ruel et al 2018;Seymour et al 2019).…”