The Impact Of Climate Crisis Is Gendered; So Why Aren't The Solutions?

Across the globe, women are the first to bear the brunt of climate change and also the first to respond. In drought-hit villages, flood-prone deltas, and forest communities facing biodiversity loss, women are managing water sources, restoring soils, shifting agricultural patterns, and keeping families and ecosystems afloat- climate champions in the true sense. However, their leadership potential remains unrecognised across communities and across institutions.

Policy frameworks, funding priorities, and planning processes often fail to account for women's lived experiences or solutions to adapt to climate change. Without women being an integral part of it, climate responses risk being ineffective, unsustainable, or unjust. If we are to build real resilience, gender equity cannot be peripheral. It must shape how we define, fund, and scale climate action.

Climate change and women

According to the FAO, in developing nations, women produce ~80 per cent of food and are disproportionately responsible for securing water and fuel, areas that are directly affected by climate shocks. As ecosystems become more fragile, their work becomes harder, riskier, and more time-consuming. They are also often excluded from owning land, accessing finance, or participating in governance.

These structural inequities leave women more exposed to climate impacts. As per a UN Women report, by 2050, climate change may push up to 158 million more women and girls into poverty and see 236 million more face food insecurity.  

Climate change conversations often miss the multitude of opportunities that women present. Women’s knowledge, from seed resilience to water harvesting or disaster response, is contextual, local, tested, and deeply intergenerational. When leveraged meaningfully, their leadership leads to equitable and effective adaptation strategies.

The leadership gap is a systems gap

Despite their critical roles, women remain underrepresented in climate-related decision-making spaces, including community planning bodies and climate finance boards. This is not simply a visibility issue. It is a systems issue. Institutions often lack inclusive hiring practices, mentorship pathways, or feedback mechanisms that enable diverse leadership to thrive.

Shifting this requires more than workshops or awareness sessions. It calls for a fundamental rethink of how leadership is cultivated, especially in climate-vulnerable regions. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that having women as agenda-setters leads to better decision-making. This also means investing in structures that remove barriers such as language, geography, education, and social norms, and open space for new voices to be heard and followed.

From representation to resilience

Too often, inclusion is approached as a box to check; such tokenistic representation does little to build resilience. What is needed is a long-term investment in inclusive leadership pipelines. This means creating pathways for all women, especially those currently underrepresented, to shape policy, manage programmes, and lead organisations.

In several regions across Asia, women-led collectives are already driving change, from designing local climate budgets to developing sustainable agricultural models that utilise traditional knowledge. In some coastal districts, they are leading the way in nature-based flood mitigation, restoring mangroves while protecting livelihoods. What these examples show is that when communities lead, adaptation is faster, deeper, and more rooted in reality.

Inclusion is not a cost but a climate strategy

Diverse leadership is not just good to have; it is essential. Teams that reflect different lived realities are better at problem-solving, more trusted by the communities they serve, and more agile in responding to crises. In the context of climate action, where uncertainty is constant and solutions must be hyper-local, these advantages are not optional. They are essential.

Yet, many institutions still operate with narrow definitions of expertise, often shaped by privilege, language, and geography. Changing this means building internal accountability for equity, embedding gender indicators into climate frameworks, and ensuring that women are at the table from the start, not as representatives of a category, but as experts in their own right.

What needs to change

To build climate leadership that truly reflects Asia’s realities, three shifts are urgent:

1. Reimagine who qualifies as a leader. Leadership must be defined by lived experiences and community trust, not just degrees or formal roles.
2. Move from projects to pipelines. Short-term training or awareness campaigns are not enough. What is needed is sustained investment in mentoring, peer learning, and long-term career growth for underrepresented climate leaders.
3. Let communities shape the narrative. We must make space for storytelling, community data, and locally rooted priorities to drive the climate agenda.

Asia stands at a crossroads. Climate disruptions are intensifying, and so is the urgency to act. But speed without inclusion is short-sighted. Women across the region are already leading effectively. The question is whether our institutions are ready to centre that leadership and build the infrastructure to support it. Ultimately, climate resilience is not just about carbon or technology. It is about people. And half the world’s people are still being left out.

Authored by Anchal Kakkar, co-founder of Equilead. | Views expressed are the author's own.