The gendered impacts of climate change: evidence from Asia

The 2030 Agenda calls on member states to take action to combat climate change and achieve a sustainable future for all. Existing literature indicates that pre-existing socio-cultural and economic disadvantages are likely to render women and girls especially vulnerable, but empirical evidence on the gender-environment nexus is largely missing. To fill this data gap and explore the gendered effects of climate change, the study aimed to test the association between climate-related factors (drought, humidity, rainfall, flood risk, temperature, proximity to water) and gender outcomes (early marriage and childbirth, intimate partner violence, access to water and clean cooking fuels) across Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Philippines, Timor-Leste). A random forest model was applied to identify key climate-related variables of importance in predicting gender-inequality outcomes, and logistic regression analysis was run to measure the strength of the association. Findings confirm that associations between key climate variables and gender outcomes are statistically significant and pose as a warning sign that the issues of climate and gender cannot be addressed in isolation. They further illustrate the importance of working towards filling gender-environment data gaps, including SDG monitoring.