Why are women disproportionately affected by climate change?

WHY ARE WOMEN DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED BY CLIMATE CHANGE?
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WHY ARE WOMEN DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED BY CLIMATE CHANGE?
Introduction
Women have always been marginalized and vulnerable, especially in third world regions. The vulnerabilities that face them range from health, education, and also food. Poverty has been the leading reason because it increases the vulnerabilities that women face compared to the male. As experienced in developing countries, increased poverty leads to disparities in education, employment, and health compared with their male counterparts. Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects every region and country, but its effects are shaped through pervasive and based on gender inequality. Factors such as droughts, extreme storms, and waves affect women disproportionately. This analogy can be accounted for because women are projected to stay in poverty, have little access to basic needs such as owning land, and experience systematic violence that increases during periods of stability compared to their male counterparts (Tanny et al., 2016). These factors reflect that as climate change intensifies, women will continue to be vulnerable and suffer the most. Climate agreements in Paris, France included a provision that ensures that women can cope with climate change's various hazards. This essay will, therefore, analyze how climate change disproportionately affects women. This will consider the vulnerabilities caused by climate change in developing regions and how climate change exists through gender inequality.
The international panel for climate change realized that climate change hazards exaggerate inequalities in gender, which led to heavy workloads for the women, outdoor and indoor occupational hazards, emotional stress, psychological distress, and increased mortality rates compared to their male counterparts. Verona Collantes, who is an intergovernmental specialist within the UN Women, pointed out that the Inequalities in gender hamper the capacity of women and their potential to being climate advocates (Washington, Sep 2019). These inequalities ranging from control and access to resources, information and education access, and participation in decision making, describes the disparities in what men and women can do in the context of climate change. However, women are taking the forefront in climate change movements, advocating for clean energy, and developing alternative models in their communities that focus on cooperation and sustainability. Despite the ranging vulnerabilities that women face due to climate change, there are not simply sitting on the sidelines as victims because their participation in transformative processes in various countries and communities is increasingly impactful.
Hurricane Maria of 2017, which struck Puerto Rico, is regarded as a damaging storm in American history. This saw close to 3000 dead people and thousands displaced across the Island. Right after the event, women were the most affected as they had to bear the suffering of recovering what was destroyed. It is the women who took their time cleaning and taking care of the children (Dimitrov, 2019). The situation was traumatizing, and it is the women who took most of it compared to their male counterparts. Such a pattern of disparities in sufferings when it comes to climate hazards repeats itself in several cases, which deeply deepens the existing inequalities in gender.
In less developed regions, especially in Africa, women and young girls take on the responsibility of gathering water, food, and other household resources (IUCN. 2015). As climate changes worsen and drought and poverty surges, the women have too long distances to get these essential resources for their homes. Natural resources and the rise in ocean levels affect the quality of water. For instance, women in Bangladesh and India have had to suffer health consequences and poor economic status because of their natural water sources getting salty (IUCN. 2015).
When extreme temperatures and droughts dry up water sources, women have to go for long-distance in getting fresh water for cooking and managing their homes and gardens. This situation puts them in a disadvantaged position in becoming economically independent. In Mexico, the scarcity of women hampers their ability to invest in their careers compared to their male counterparts, who always have the chance to invest in their goals and careers. In Mexico, women have had to sell cheese for some extra income; acquiring milk has been a challenge because livestock owners replaced their cows that take in a lot of water with those that take less water (proQuest, 2019). These cows have less milk production, and this affects the incomes of women. With water scarcity, women have to fully rely on the garden, which forces them to spend even more on energy and water bills. Sources of water are increasingly disappearing in ways that affect women. For instance, in African countries like Senegal, women have to take long-distance in fetching and limit their chance to be independent farmers. It is disturbing how much women who take up 43% of the agricultural workforce have to encounter countless limitations to their economic independence.
Economic disparities continue to increase worldwide due to climate change as women are denied the right to own properties across the globe. Women are often denied loans to acquire fertilizers and other tools, which limits their agricultural independence. They also experience hardships in accessing markets for their harvest (IUCN. 2015). Due to drought, water scarcity increases, making women less likely to access credit and the finances required to become resilient in such changing environmental conditions. Most women in these third world regions have no title deeds in the lands they cultivate; therefore, their redress avenues are often limited because of adverse climate changes that affect their output in agriculture.
According to the Global Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), exploitation and gender violence increase as poverty increases, access to land becomes inhabitable, and climate change advances. Climate change affects access to resources. Resource tends to shrink because of drought and adverse climate conditions. Such conditions have led to the increased activities of human trafficking and labor exploitation in retrieving natural resources. The most affected group in this is women, who are most...