Feature by Kerrie Draghi (Written over a year ago so sources may be a little old but still relevant.)
Thanks to raised awareness, most of us and our grandparents are aware now of the climate crisis and just how drastic the situation has become for people, animals and our planet. However, it’s gendered impact is rarely discussed.
Reports from UN Women have shown that threats against already disadvantaged women and girls such as child marriage, human trafficking, maternal deaths and sexual violence within conflict are tripled
during climate upheavals.
Women and girls who are usually responsible in rural areas for gathering food and water must travel further and work much harder to look after their communities, when natural
resources are destroyed.
As a result of this, girls’ fundamental right to education is also made precarious and they become more vulnerable to being forced to marry young. When climate disasters hit small communities, the health
and safety of women and children become endangered. Maternal and child deaths increase, as hospitals and midwives are harder to access and travel to.
Because it is women who are most at risk, it is women and feminist groups who are leading the way to healing our planet. Activist groups and networks like Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, She Changes Climate and Women for Climate Justice are educating people on how we must fight climate change from a gender-inclusive perspective.
An exhibition shown in 2025 at the Barbican ‘Re/sisters: A Lens on Gender and Ecology’ is a striking portrayal of how female artists and feminists have come together to protest wars, droughts and climate injustice.
The exhibit shows photographs from the over 30,000 women who protested nuclear arms at Greenham Common and works from eco-feminist artists like Ana Mendieta and Judy Chicago who drew crucial links between the destruction of our planet and the violence committed daily against women.
Outside of the art world and into our present time, young women like Sofia Fernandez, a 28-year-old Psychology student, animal rights and climate justice activist, are creating change within their local
communities to help restore our planet and hope in our future. For example, Sofia spear-headed the campaign for London Metropolitan University, where she studies, to pledge to become 100% plant
based.
“Feminism and the climate crisis are interlinked.”, says Sofia. “You cannot resolve one issue without the other. In order to achieve true equality for women, we must first acknowledge the gender inequalities
when addressing the climate crisis.”
Despite this, formal discussions towards climate justice are not representative in gender. At the 2025 World Climate Action Summit, only 15 out of 140 world leaders scheduled to speak were women, and delegation at COP28 was only 38 percent female.
Investing in women and girls is the smart choice for everyone, as studies show that women reinvest up to 90 percent back into their families and communities. It is essential that women and marginalised genders are at the forefront of policy and decision-making, if we want to resolve the climate crisis and reach true gender equality.
Anne Karpf, journalist and writer of How Women Can Save the Planet, says, “Women need to have at least parity in every decision-making arena to negotiate and regulate for a sustainable planet, but as
part of an intersectional movement for climate justice.”
But is it right that women should bear the responsibility for our planet, as a gender most negatively impacted by the climate crisis, and on top of the burden of gendered violence that we already carry?
Ruby Sands, a 29-year-old recent graduate from a Gender Studies course and volunteer with the Girl Guides and feminist group the Fawcett Society, says, “The major impacts of climate change in the U.K
are combined with intersecting identities, such as low-income level. Climate change affects food prices, and cheaper housing in low-income areas are more prone to flooding. If there is a particularly cold winter due to climate change, electricity prices for heating also cost more.”
“For women, you are often living on low-income and spending more money on your family than men. So, over the course of your life, women pay a much higher price to have to then face the additional costs
of climate change when we grow older.”
Women make up the majority of the health and social workforce, not to mention the amount of care work in our daily lives that goes unacknowledged and unpaid. Healthcare workers and activists are also
at risk of secondary or vicarious trauma, a phenomenon where people take on some of the trauma of others through witnessing it, whilst not being directly involved.
And women are still doing more housework than men, a 2023 survey has shown. Compassion fatigue is a term used to describe the emotional, psychological and physical toll that people feel, usually when they are involved in care work, as they take on the responsibility of other people or
causes that can be very overwhelming. Symptoms include extreme exhaustion, feelings of desperation, increased anxiety and numbness. Understandably, women and climate activists are of the groups deeply
affected.
Yet gender equity benefits people of all genders. If the climate activism movement is to keep up a necessary long and sustained fight, isn’t it far past time that everybody, regardless of gender or age, does our fair share of cleaning up after our planet?
Anne Karpf summarises: “Too much responsibility is already placed on women. To shop green, limit the size of their families and control their fertility. Climate activism risks being yet another thing on our todo list: shopping, cooking, laundry – and in our spare time saving the planet.”
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