Climate and gender policy

Policy Brief

Climate change is a systemic issue that cannot be addressed by siloed thinking and policymaking. The transition to a political, social and economic model needs a holistic understanding to address the planetary emergencies and to implement the commitments of the EU Climate Law. By holistic, we mean a theoretical ground aware of interdependencies between different policy fields.

Transforming societies and economies while respecting sustainability principles means mainstreaming environmental concerns whenever we design policies for all other areas. At the same time, like the effects of climate change, also environmental policies can affect different areas, such as gender and health.

The ‘Climate mainstreaming: Breaking down the silos’ series comprises four policy briefs that foreground and disentangle these interlinkages by connecting climate matters with different disciplinary backgrounds (justice, gender, digital and health).

The objective is to influence and assist progressive policymakers and stakeholders who want to adopt holistic, comprehensive and environmentally sustainable policies that can remedy rather than exacerbate existing inequalities. 

Gender policy

All policy is gendered, and gender inequality and climate change are interconnected. In a society structured around hierarchical gender relations, policies will always have an unequal gendered impact. Ignoring this reinforces existing inequalities.

For example, failure to conduct a gender analysis of just transition proposals reinforces the gendered division of labour in carbon-intensive regions, prioritizing alternative employment for men without addressing the paid and unpaid care work conducted by women in the same community.

This policy brief argues that gender equality and climate change should both be mainstreamed throughout all EU internal and external activities. The synergies between them should be fully explored in order to achieve the greatest co-benefits. Together, they will contribute to the systemic transformative change, which is essential to both gender and climate justice.

Integrating gender and climate mainstreaming into all policy sectors and at all levels of policymaking will contribute to the achievement of the EU’s SDG targets, the implementation of the UNFCCC commitments and its Gender Action Plan, and the EU’s own European Green Deal and Gender Equality Strategy.