Gender and Climate

The Global Gender and Climate Alliance was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007. The GGCA works to ensure that climate change policies, decision-making, and initiatives at the global, regional, and national levels are gender responsive. The GGCA has grown to include 25 institutions among United Nations and civil society organizations and has been recognized as a unique and effective partnership that is bringing a human face to climate change decision-making and initiatives.

• Women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours yet receive only 10% of the world’s income.
• Women own only 1% of the world’s property.
• Women members of parliament globally average only 17% of all seats.
• Only 8% of the world’s cabinet ministers are women.
• Seventy-five percent of the world’s 876 million illiterate adults are women.
• Worldwide women received 78% of the wages received by men for the same work, although in some regions, they have a better educational background. In some parts of the world, the wage gap between women and men is close to 40%.
• Of the 550 million low-paid workers in the world, 330 million or 60% are women.
• According to the best available data approximately 70% of those who live on less than a dollar each day are women.
• In a sample of 141 countries over the period 1981–2002, it was found that natural disasters (and their subsequent impact) on average kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men.

Sources: Social Watch, 2007 and 2008; Oxfam, 2007; Neumayer and Plümper, 2007; and ILO, 2008.
http://gender-climate.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/publications/A11_ggca_TrainingManualonGenderandClimateChange.pdf