From Disasters to Desperation: The Toll of Climate Change on Women and Girls

Floods. Heatwaves. Wildfires. These are the words that come to mind when climate change is mentioned. Climate change is perhaps the largest impending global conflict that we are currently trying to manage. A simple search on Google will uncover stories of recent natural disasters with chilling doomsday predictions. But what about women? Historically, climate scientists have often found it difficult to find the link between gender and climate change, with very few studies noting the correlations between the two. The reality, of course, is very different. Climate change has, and continues to, exacerbate existing gender inequalities in many countries, where even today their absence in the discussion on greener technology is directly impacting women’s health and wellbeing. This article aims to illuminate how the climate crisis is in fact not ‘gender neutral’, where the gendered focus adds to the absence of rural women in environmental scholarship. In particular, there will be a study of women in Africa and South Asia, where this study will contend women and girls are in the frontline of the impacts of climate change, which in turn pose unique threats to their womanhood, health, and safety. 

Between March 4th and 21st March 2019 the Southern Hemisphere was hit by one of the worst tropical cyclones on record, Cyclone Idai, which cost the lives of almost 2000 people. Whilst climate scientists were quick to note the cyclone was not an isolated incident by noting the severe drought that gripped Southern Africa prior was in part of wider severe weather events, this is not the whole picture. Abigail Higgins (2019) in her seminal study noted how flood management hotlines in Malawi were also reporting cases of 74 child marriages in the international aid camps set up by the United Nations Refugee Agency. Crucially, this number was almost double the average of underage marriages that were normally seen in Malawi. What these statistics highlight is a wider problem where as a result of climate change, extreme weather events are increasing the instance of child marriage. Gender and development professor Nita Rao (2019) has noted the impending nature of the climate crisis, particularly floods and droughts, are creating push factors for parents to marry their daughters off. In other words, the fear of being unable to adequately take care of daughters in the future is acting as a justification to marry them off quicker. Whilst the current child marriage statistic is already high at one in five girls getting married before adulthood, as the effects of climate change worsen, it is expected that more parents in the global south will be required to make these difficult decisions, with Africa set to be the country hit hardest. 

Maria with her six children following the devastation of Cyclone Idai. One example of many young women and girls at risk of child marriage. Source: Elena Heatherwick, Oxfam.

Whilst climate change is impacting women’s prospects in the short term through marriage, in the long term it is directly impacting their biology. The sweeping effects of climate change in agriculture has propelled the increase in the use of pesticides in farming in many low income countries. These pesticides act as a double edged sword where not only do they contribute significantly to greenhouse emissions, but its uses are expected to increase as climate change worsens. Yet, most importantly, pesticide use is creating significant harm for women. The World Wildlife Fund highlights how Pakistan is the world’s top producer for cotton yet historically has been cultivated using pesticides and fertilisers that damage both the environment and human health. In other words, whilst the cash crop benefits the development of the economy, with a peak growth rate of 103.87% in 1984 and peak production rate of 11,138 (lb. Bales) in 2004, it is at the expense of human health. This can be seen most clearly where the manual picking of cotton is conducted almost exclusively by women. Memon et al (2019) note that pesticides are often sprayed very close to, or sometimes even whilst picking is being completed and they become a major hazard for the women involved. Their subsequent study on the women cotton pickers in Sindh province of Shaheed Benazirbad District in 2019 noted how more than 70% of the women were illiterate and had no formal education or schooling. Not only does this show a lack of development for women’s education in Pakistan in favour for manual labour to be conducted for economic growth, but it presents a greater problem for women being unable to read the warning labels and risks associated with handling pesticides. Consequently, health problems were reported by the women where more than 25% reported a skin injury, and 20% reported headaches and fevers after using pesticides that are classed under WHO toxicity II (moderately hazardous). This is where I would contend women’s bodies are subjected, disproportionately, to a harm that directly hinders their development as productive labourers and is a direct consequence of climate change. 

Image above captures Pakistani women collecting cotton. None have any protective gear and instead are using their thin scarves as face covering from pesticide use. Source: Aamir Qureshi, Chief Photographer AFP Islamabad.

Further, climate change is directly impacting womanhood. This can be seen with Pakistan having one of the highest number of stillbirths at a rate of 8.6 in 200 pregnancies, and even greater in the agricultural town of Thatta in the Sindh region where the stillbirth rate is the highest across the country at 56.9 per 1000 births. Whilst studies conducted by Asim et al (2022) have attributed this to the lack of a functioning health system and social care for women, where the mean age of marriage is 16.5 years, Mehboob et al (2015) go further to propose the connection to pesticides. They note the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), commonly used in cotton production can result in birth defects, the death of foetus, and normal organ function. Bhatt (2000) reaffirms their findings where unlike men, the higher proportion of fatty tissues in women, often in breasts, serve as storage sites for DDT contamination. A comparative study in maternal milk in Karachi between mothers who were (R1) and were not (R2) exposed to pesticides, as shown in the table below, highlights how women’s lives were affected differently to that of men where there was more than double of the amount of pesticide residue found in the breast milk for agricultural women.

 Table 1: Maximum Pesticide Residue Level in Milk Samples in R1 and R2 Regions (Mehboob et al, 2015) 

ND; not detected, MRL; Maximum Residue Limit

What these statistics demonstrate, I assert, is where the contamination of breast milk mutates what is meant to maintain a new life into a vehicle of harm for the sake of agricultural productivity.

Equally, Daniels et al (1997) note how prolonged pesticide use and contact can lead to alterations in the genetic material and can increase the risks associated with leukaemia or early stage cancers. In their seminal research, Ali et al (2008) studied these effects in the cotton producing city of Bahawalpur in Punjab through taking blood samples of rural working women. What they found is a threefold increase in the change of cytogenetic material within the working women which highlighted a detection of the future development of diseases such as cancer. Whilst the short term effects reported was almost double the number of skin allergies, their results continued the correlation where four times the number of women had difficulty conceiving. As this is the first research of its kind to be undertaken in Pakistan, the results on this are patchy because of external uncontrolled variables such as diet and the environment which also impact the findings presented. However, the findings can be supported outside the Punjab region in the Sindh as well where women are not given provisions whilst working with pesticides. As the table below depicts, more than 50% of women utilised no protective measure whilst working with pesticides and only 20% had some form of mouth covering.

 Table 2: Protective Measures of Women Cotton Workers During Picking in Sindh (Memon et al, 2019)

What these findings represent, I propose, is a disregard for the development of women’s long term health where women are required to determine their own development using ineffective measures such as thin scarves, without the support of the state. Whilst of course not all women in Pakistan are cultivators, and Sathar and Kazi (2000) highlight in the Barani region due to a high proportion of the absence of men in the army women take over a ‘substantial portion’ of management within agriculture, in Punjab and Sindh there remains a gendered division of labour, and consequently a gendered experience to the effects of climate change. 

It is clear that there is a relationship between climate change and gender. This study has highlighted the importance of not neglecting women, where extreme weather events are disproportionately affecting their bodily development and their womanhood. The climate crisis is not gender neutral. Where climate change is seen as the largest conflict that will affect the world we must not forget the real players, not statistics, who are being affected. Of course this is not to suggest men are not affected by climate change, rather that it is the women of the global south who are continually overlooked. This study then, intends to untangle the misconception that climate change is gender-less, where global policymakers should make better use of first hand accounts and testimonies by marginal groups and not leave them invisible when attempting to manage global conflict.