At just 13 years old, Ntoya Sande was forced into marriage due to her family’s food insecurity. Ntoya’s parents originally had a small plot of land, but floods wiped out their harvest. Despite her attempts to negotiate and express her lack of readiness, her parents insisted on the marriage as it meant one less mouth to feed. Ntoya, a resident of Malawi, is just one of many women whose stories were highlighted in a recent study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (Castañeda Carney et al., 2020). The issue of underage girls being forced into marriage to cope with the aftermath of climate-related catastrophes is not confined to Malawi alone. The research indicates that in Ethiopia and South Sudan, young girls are also being traded off as brides for livestock during severe droughts.

Ntoya’s story highlights the interrelatedness of climate change and socioeconomic problems, such as gender-based violence. This relation has been extensively studied and documented in scholarly literature. A simple online search would yield numerous comprehensive research works on the vulnerability of women to the impacts of climate change, which are often analysed through various lenses, including feminist perspectives. These perspectives are not mutually exclusive; they frequently coexist with post-colonial and Marxist perspectives (Kaijser & Kronsell, 2014; Sultana, 2022), illustrating the intricate nature of the discourse surrounding gender inequity in the context of climate change. Given this complexity, it is challenging to fully comprehend gender inequities without taking into account historical factors and identity politics.

Stories similar to Ntoya’s have been brought to the high-level climate conference’s table (UNFCCC, 2022) in the hope that they will become less prevalent in the future. As climate change discourse is always associated with maintaining a decent living environment for future generations, it is then important to ensure that girls, especially those in the global South, are also taken into consideration. Therefore, this requires a gender-responsive approach to anticipating the impacts of climate change.

Increasing women’s participation serves as one of the gender-responsive approaches (Nelson & Huyer, 2016). Women’s participation in climate governance is pivotal to building a climate-resilient future (Morrow, 2017). While many climate-resilient projects in the global South have involved women, their involvement is merely as beneficiaries (Mikulewicz, 2019), not as active agents in the current climate governance (Evertsen, 2022). Therefore, in this essay, I will argue that “there is still a lack of a critical conceptualisation of gender inequity and how it is further addressed in climate governance”. To support my argument, I will ask this question, “How have women historically been positioned in climate change discourse?” Beyond that, this essay also aims to examine pathways to increase women’s participation in contemporary climate governance and to propose a course of action to “feminise” such governance. In this essay, ”feminising” does not imply an attempt by feminists to transform the discourse on climate change into one that is solely focused on women. On the contrary, numerous social scholars contend that such an endeavour is unfeasible due to the long-standing establishment of a male-dominated society. The question that matters to examine pathways of increased women’s participation is, “What steps are necessary to progress towards a more gender-responsive climate governance?” Regarding this, it is important to note that this essay does not necessarily try to provide pathways into the gender-responsive future, but instead, it humbly tries to help navigate the process by asking important questions. In other words, this essay can be an exercise for readers to think about the unthinkable: the gender-responsive futures.

The essay will have four sections; one will be used to historicise why women have become one of the most vulnerable communities in terms of climate change. The second section provides an overview and analysis of women’s involvement in the current climate governance. Then, the third one explains what needs to be done to move forward. Finally, the fourth section will conclude the discussion.

Theorising and historicising gender inequity in climate change discourse

The concept of gender is developed and theorised by several feminist frameworks. Although seen differently by various feminist theories, gender is commonly agreed to have a relation to power (Kronsell, 2017). An emphasis on power in these theories allows us to critically view societal practices and gender norms that leave women out of climate change discourse. Due to the emphasis on power relations, in addition, feminist perspectives are now able to conceptualise other social elements in these norms, such as race, class, and sexuality, among others – or well-known as intersectionality (Collins, 2020).

There is, of course, much literature investigating the relationship between gender inequity and climate change. Scholars agree that women in the South are more vulnerable to climate change impacts (Arora-Jonsson, 2011; MacGregor, 2010). This demonstrates that gender is a vulnerability factor needed to be considered in climate governance. In relation to the findings, to some extent, the notion of women’s vulnerability to climate change opens up many climate resilience projects in the global South that target women as their beneficiaries. Despite the significance of focusing on women in climate resilience initiatives, there remains a notable absence of a critical view of how gender inequity is perceived and situated within the context of discussions on climate change. So far, the solution to this inequity has only focused on enhancing women’s livelihood (MacGregor, 2010). Unfortunately, this concern of inequity is beyond that. Policymakers, donors, and government merely see women’s vulnerability as given, without having a critical understanding of the historical context of the power relations. When discussing the impact of wider environmental and structural factors on society, there is often a tendency to focus solely on how women and other marginalised groups are vulnerable to these forces. This perspective overlooks the fact that these groups can actively work towards transforming and adapting to these changes, together and from the margins (Ravera et al., 2016; Agarwal, 1992; Mies & Shiva, 1993; Buechler & Hanson, 2015). Therefore, as long as we still equate improved women’s livelihood with solutions to gender inequity, no meaningful progress can be witnessed.

It is nothing new in feminist scholarship that men are historically more responsible for total global emissions. Especially those who are white, middle-class, and middle-aged (Hultman & Pulé, 2018). To illustrate how men historically shape the climate change discourse, Hultman (2017), in his book chapter, comes up with an interesting term, “industrial masculinities”, where he highlights a men-dominated and -ran industrial modernisation until the 1990s. Criticism absolutely has been raised against industrial masculinity system due to its industrial’s flaws and shortcomings since mid-1970s. Over the last forty years, the ecological and industrial discourse has resulted in an intense conflict in energy and environmental politics. To contextualise men’s domination in the polluting energy sector, research by Miller (2004) reports that in 1994, women accounted for a very small percentage in the energy industry.

Masculinity and climate change are also not new discussions. Many theorise that men’s domination in the polluting energy industry is a manifestation of a capitalist-patriarchal complex, combined with masculinist norms (Kronsell, 2013). These masculinist norms restrict emotions and intuition by emphasising logical problem-solving, prioritising economic rationalism, relying on technological solutions to social and ecological issues, and promoting competitive and individualistic approaches to life that lead to materialistic narcissism (Mellström, 1995). These norms further institutionalise industrial capitalism that results in environmental destruction, treating labour and non-human nature as mere resources to be exploited for profit maximisation (McKinney & Fulkerson, 2015).

As it has been clear that men historically are responsible for environmental damages in these past decades, as well as the constant shaping of the world structure that increases women’s vulnerability, it is now the time to start imagining what we can actively do to shift away from the men-structured climate governance. Later in the next section, it will be discussed the pathways to move away from male-dominated systems of scientific knowledge and economic production that have historically undervalued women and nature.

What has (not) been done

Some strides have been taken towards achieving gender equality in climate governance. For instance, in 2009, the Women and Gender Constituency (WCG) was established as one of the stakeholder groups of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which consists of 33 women’s and environmental organisations that ensure women’s voices are heard in all processes of the UNFCCC framework. At COP20, the Lima Work Programme on Gender was embraced to encourage gender-responsive climate policies. Furthermore, the Paris Agreement, adopted at COP21, established a gender-responsive outcome as the benchmark for implementation.

Despite some progress, there is still a significant amount of work to be done to achieve gender equity in climate governance. For example, a factsheet published by IUCN (2015) revealed that only 12% of the 881 national environmental ministries (such as those related to natural resources, water, and forests) in 193 countries were headed by women. In addition, the proportion of female core authors in the IPCC Assessment Reports has only increased from 8% in 1990 to 33% in 2021 (Liverman et al., 2022). Therefore, despite positive developments, there are still numerous challenges to overcome before achieving a fair representation and equal opportunities for all genders.

Moving forward using anticipatory governance framework

Knowing the fact that current climate governance is gender biased, then how do we draw on more gender-responsive climate futures? The good news is, that the future is a wide-open field. Various actors are able to shape it according to their interests. The field serves as a platform where different versions of possible climate futures are created, discussed, and potentially disputed by policymakers. But then, the question that matters is how do we shape it into more gender-responsive? This is, of course, a key challenge in the future through democratic foresight processes itself (Stevenson & Dryzek, 2012).

Anticipatory governance seems to be a first small step to answer the question. It is a flexible approach to decision-making that takes into account a variety of potential future scenarios. This approach allows for better preparation for potential changes and helps guide current decisions to maximise future opportunities or minimise potential risks (Quay, 2010). It is about more than designing, but instead paying more attention to the decision-making processes in making sense of our different tomorrows. By paying more attention, a comprehensive assessment needed to be done before stepping forward to avoid anticipatory ruination. Anticipatory ruination, as defined by Paprocki (2019), is “a discursive and material process of social and ecological destruction in anticipation of real or perceived threats.” Looking specifically at the case study of shrimp aquaculture in Bangladesh, she highlighted the negative impacts towards rice farmers due to land shift from rice farming areas. The impacts involve the loss of jobs experienced by the local rice farmers; all this is because of the inconsiderate imposition of an economically biased adaptation programme by the World Bank and USAID.

Figure 1. Foresight as anticipatory steering: imagining the future and impacting the present? (Vervoort and Gupta, 2018).

This section attempts to apply a framework of anticipatory governance by Vervoort and Gupta (2018) [see Figure 1] by asking critical questions, mostly on the status quo, to build a foundation for the next research agenda. These questions are important as foresight processes have a political nature, not only in terms of who benefits from the scenarios created but also in how foresight is utilised to include new actors in decision-making, raise awareness, establish credibility for policy decisions through experts, and science-based scenario building exercises (Vervoort & Gupta, 2018).

The first question is: Why is the foresight process undertaken? Few foresight projects have been undertaken that solely focus on reducing women’s vulnerability towards climate change. However, there are calls for considering gender in future climate financing (UN Press, 2022). Comprehensively understanding women’s historical struggle that brought them into this vulnerability really matters in answering this question. It is also important to question the existing foresight projects if they are integrating gender at all in the process. This way, we would get an idea of how gender-responsive the process would be.

The second question is, Who is funding, organising, and participating in foresight? triggers a critical analysis of women’s involvement level and actors’ interests in the foresight process. What are the interests of the funders? What are the relations between the funders and the organisers? What perspectives do the organisers hold in directing the process? Are there equitable numbers of women involved in the process? Most of these questions were also asked by Roehr (2007). As the nature of this question is conscious about actors, including participating actors, it somehow extends the urgency to integrate intersectionality among women. Disabled women, women of colour, queer women, poor women, women in the global South, and divorced women have different capacities in adapting to climate change impacts. For instance, a study by Djoudi & Brockhaus (2011) found that development projects targeting women in Northern Mali have not integrated climate change variability into their planning. This lack of integration further negatively impacts, specifically, poor women as they lack capacities; power in the household, access to natural resources, knowledge, and financial resources. Then all these elements about participating actors lead to a question: to what extent is the foresight process taking these identities along with their specific socioeconomic characteristics into consideration?

How is the future conceptualised in terms of knowability and manageability? is rather a difficult question to answer. As the future holds so much uncertainty, this third question aims to understand certain projects’ stances on the extent to which the actors believe they can predict and control the future. How do actors’ beliefs about the knowability of the future affect their decision-making in different domains that affect women, such as finance or politics? Moreover, how do the same actors’ beliefs affect their willingness to take risks or invest in new ventures? By asking these sub-questions, it makes us mindful of how much resources we would put up for investing, for instance, in gender-responsive climate financing. Even though many global climate funds have developed gender policies and are considering gender issues in financing climate adaptation programs for an unpredictable future (Price, 2021), according to Cooper et al. (2019), these mechanisms have not yet shown a noticeable increase in participation from women’s organisations.

The questions above trigger a dictum that “an imagined future overwhelms the present”; highlighting the relevance of considering present political implications. Envisioning a future can eclipse the immediate, leading to a myopic focus on future possibilities. Thus, it becomes imperative to recognise that present-day decisions are constrained and conditioned by visions of the future, which in turn have a tangible impact on regulatory frameworks, resource allocation strategies, and other socio-political choices. The interplay between future visions and present realities is critical for policymakers and scholars alike, as it shapes the trajectory of society’s evolution.

Conclusions

The story of Ntoya Sande being forced into marriage opens this essay’s discussion of the vulnerability of girls or women in the global South. How it is important to secure the future livelihood of those girls serves as a foundation to look for pathways to gender-responsive futures. In this essay, the argument that “there is still a lack of a critical conceptualisation of gender inequity and how it is further addressed in climate governance” was defended. This was done by theorising gender inequity in climate change and showing data that current climate governance only focuses on involving women in climate-resilient projects as beneficiaries, not as active agents. Numbers and data on the lack of involvement of women in strategic positions were illustrated. This highlights a lack of critical view on how women should be positioned, or gender inequity, in general, should conceptualised, in the climate change discourse.

This essay continued further. As a humble attempt, the essay also provided a space for readers to exercise thinking the unthinkable: the gender-responsive futures. This attempt was made possible by applying the analytical framework of anticipatory governance by Vervoort and Gupta (2018). In short, this section broke down the authors’ main questions to treat futures as non-linear pathways.

Due to the essay’s limitation, it is then important to call for more thinkers to imagine beyond the current climate governance. One could wonder and raise questions about how to empower many kinds of women in the climate change adaptation effort. Or one could even dive into an imagination where more women become female global climate leaders. One could argue that gender-responsive futures are impossible, but there is always hope in thinking the unthinkable.

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This essay was written by Rickdy Vanduwin. He leads GSHR’s environmental programme and strategy, drawing on over four years of experience in sustainability research and policy across the UN, private sector, and investor networks. He currently works as an Investor Practice Analyst at AIGCC, has contributed to climate research at UN-Habitat, and holds a Master’s in Climate Studies from Wageningen University.