Climate change affects women the most. This premise is explained in the report " Climate Change and Health " prepared by the Observatory of Health and Environment of the DKV Institute of Healthy Living, in collaboration with ECODES.
The report analyzes the impact of climate change on health and its relationship with poverty, gender equity, and childhood, addressing its negative social consequences and reviewing the necessary actions to address these impacts. Some consequences that affect children and women to a greater extent.
In many regions of the planet, women and men do not enjoy the same conditions and they suffer the most from economic, social and political marginalization, the fact that they are excluded from decision-making and their limited access to financial resources and materials are two of the reasons that explain this greater vulnerability of women to the impact of climate change.
In addition, women constitute the majority of the population where the greatest amount of poverty generated by factors related to climate change is concentrated. As a result, climate change especially increases the peak of poverty and vulnerability of women and girls, since it is estimated that around 60 percent of the population with chronic malnutrition and famine in the world are women and girls, as per Spanish Innovation.
"If women engaged in agriculture had the same access as men to productive resources, the number of people with hunger could be reduced between 100 and 150 million," the document explains.
On the other hand, although climate change affects the entire world population, the impacts of the diseases generated by it are different between men and women because they enjoy more limited access to medical services than men. One of these most prominent impacts is malaria, of the 50 million pregnant women living in endemic countries, around 10 thousand dies from this disease, as per Spanish Innovation.
Women also face other barriers related to the world of work that aggravate the impact that climate change has on them: they work more hours a week without the right to a rest period, receive lower wages, have more limited access to social security systems and occupational health measures.
This greater impact is especially significant in the case of women who live in rural areas due to their difficult access to property and financing, which is why climate change affects them much more directly.
