by Ruyan Chen

"In general, around the world, women are poorer than men. Their poverty arises from the roles they are assigned and the limits placed by societies on their access to and control of resources. Women are disproportionately employed in unpaid, underpaid and non-formal sectors of economies. Inheritance laws and traditions, marriage arrangements, banking systems and social patterns that reinforce women's dependence on fathers, husbands and sons all contribute both to their unfavourable access to resources and their lack of power to change things."

Anderson, Mary B. "Understanding the Disaster-Development Continuum." Gender & Development, vol. 2, no. 1, 1994, pp. 7–10., https://doi.org/10.1080/09682869308519989.

Why is there a need for change?

The 1991 Cyclone Gorky took away approximately 140,000 lives in Bangladesh. The ratio of female to male death in this natural disaster is 14:1. Unfortunately, this is just one of many cases that women are disproportionately affected by threats brought by climate change. Women globally are more vulnerable than men to extreme weather events caused by global warming. This is especially so in developing countries and in poor and rural areas. About 70 percent of poor people worldwide are women. Low-income limits their access to resources that can help them in coping with extreme weather events. Factors leading to greater economic insecurity among women can be that generally more women are involved in domestic works and taking care of household, their much greater reliance on agriculture and natural resources put them in a more vulnerable position when extreme weather events cause massive destruction. Behind this global phenomenon is the deeply rooted social and cultural attitude towards women that they are of secondary status to men and they should focus on domestic work rather than becoming migrant workers.

In the context of China, gender is rarely addressed in climate change. Stereotype regarding the role of women worsen the disparity of negative impacts between men and women and reveal itself in the form of feminization of agricultural labor. The State Council Information Office of the People's Republics of China reveals that women account for 70 percent of total agricultural labor force in rural areas. While men have migrated to work in urban areas, which enable them to earn a higher salary and better protected from extreme weather events, many women are left behind to carry out farming and unpaid domestic work on her own. In times of extreme weather events, women have no choice but to bear the burden alone. As they rely almost completely on primary sector, damages to crops, natural resources, and cattle directly undermine their source of income, making them less capable in adapting to climate change.

Furthermore, women especially the elderly receive less education than men. This gendered difference in education further hinders women's ability to be trained and equipped with necessary knowledge to respond to threats brought by climate change, and results in the disparity in perceptions of climate change between men and women. Studies done on a village in Ningxia Province of China suggest that men are generally more aware of and knowledgeable about climate change compared to women. Moreover, women's ability to be leaders in combating climate change is seriously underrated. They have limited say in policy making to address climate change. Male perspective takes a dominant position, excluding female perspective from being taken into account when designing climate protection measures.

What have women in Hongpo village been suffering from?

"雪灾过后又有洪水泥石流，太累了，过了

以后我的手脚就开始疼了，关节也肿起来了，

有人说是妇科病有人说是关节炎，去了县医

院也看不好，现在还在疼，以后重活怕是做不

起了。村子里有好多我这个年纪的妇女都得

了这种病，有些没钱看病就待在家里吃草药，

也不见好。"

Baima Snow Mountain

Hongpo Village is located at Deqin county in northwestern Yunnan province of China, next to Baima Snow Mountain. All villagers are Tibetans and among them 1084 are women. They lead a half-agriculture-half-grazing way of living. Yunnan province is threatened by extreme weather events frequently. The heavy and consistent snowfalls from January to early March in 2008 caused crops in the village to die of frost. Wheats, vegetables, and trees of fruit perished, leaving women in the village with no income. One female villager Yixilamu says that the whole village depends on the income of male villagers working outside and subsidies from the government for survival. But this was only the beginning of their nightmare. The melting of snow combined with heavy rains triggered two major debris flows that crashed the wall villagers built as a precautionary measure. Women contribute actively to precautionary measures and post-disaster reconstructions but their health are severely degraded by it. Study shows that women's disease rate is 2.87 higher than men in climate-induced extreme weather events.

Yunnan province was affected by a persistent drought from 2009 to 2012. Women not only had to suffer from reductions in income as drought reduced crop and milk yields, but also had to search for water and carry them back to irrigate the crop and feed the cattle. Consequently, women had to carry out more physical work for a longer period of time every day. Study finds out that their working time can increase by 2.65 hours a day.

What is really behind the problem?

Gender gap in terms of being negatively affected by the effects of climate change, unequal division of labor, perceptions of climate change, status and participation in climate change policy making can be traced to the traditional Chinese ideology that men take a dominant position while women take a secondary role to assist him. It has been a common saying in China that men belong to the outside while women belong to the inside. This gender bias has been circulating generation after generation, keeping women from become migrant workers and leaders in climate change policy making, which deprives them the opportunity to escape the vicious cycle of being trapped at home and bear the consequences of climate change. Actions to promote women's role in various aspects of living may be the first step to tackle the gender gap in climate change.

There is light

37 years after Cyclone Gorky landed on Bangladesh, Cyclone Sidr striked the land again. The ratio of women to men death dropped to 5:1 thanks to strategies that involved more women and made them an important part of disaster preparation.

Works Cited

Nicola Howe Lead Modeler, et al. "More Women Die in Natural Disasters-Why? and What Can Be Done?" BRINK, 25 Apr. 2019, https://www.brinknews.com/gender-and-disasters/.

"Improving Women's Odds in Disasters." World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/12/12/improving-women-disasters.

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