Activists push COP28 leaders to discuss ‘magnifying’ impact of climate change on women’s health

Activists urge policymakers to respond to climate change’s disproportionate impact on women and girls, especially where poverty makes them more vulnerable

Their recommendations include securing land rights for women, promoting women’s cooperatives and encouraging women to lead in developing climate policy

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Women gather around a well to draw water in the village of Telamwadi, northeast of Mumbai, India. Activists are urging policymakers to respond to climate change’s disproportionate impact on women and girls, especially where poverty makes them more vulnerable. Photo: AP

Published: 8:00am, 22 Nov 2023

Manju Devi suffered in pain for two months last year as she worked on a farm near India’s capital Delhi, unable to break away from duties that sometimes had her standing for hours in the waist-deep water of a rice paddy, lifting heavy loads in intense heat and spraying pesticides and insecticides. When that pain finally became too much to bear, she was rushed to a hospital.

The doctors’ verdict: Devi had suffered a prolapsed uterus and would need a hysterectomy. She had not said a word to her family about her discomfort because of societal taboo over discussing a “women’s illness”, and with two grown children and three grandchildren looking to the 56-year-old widow to help put food on the table, Devi had relied on painkillers to stay in the fields.

“I endured excruciating pain for months, scared to speak about it publicly. It shouldn’t take a surgical procedure to make us realise the cost of increasing heat,” she said, surrounded by women who told of undergoing a similar ordeal.

As the annual UN-led climate summit known as COP is set to convene later this month in Dubai, activists are urging policymakers to respond to climate change’s disproportionate impact on women and girls, especially where poverty makes them more vulnerable.

Their recommendations include securing land rights for women, promoting women’s cooperatives and encouraging women to lead on developing climate policy. They also suggest that countries – especially developing countries like India – commit more money in their budgets to ensure gender equity in climate policies.

Group of 20 leaders who met in New Delhi in September also recognised the problem, calling for accelerating climate action with gender equality at its core by increasing women’s participation and leadership in mitigation and adaptation.

Lakshmi fetches water for her family who lives in a makeshift tent near a brick kiln in Pilakhana village of Aligarh district in Uttar Pradesh. Photo: AP

Devi is a farmworker in Syaraul, a village of about 7,000 a few hours southeast of Delhi in Uttar Pradesh, India’s biggest and most populous state. Several other middle-aged and older women from the village described similar injuries leading to hysterectomies.