Women in Rural Agriculture Stricken by Climate Change Effects

Aug 9, 2021 | Onke Ngcuka
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Climate change is not gender neutral. As developing countries bear the brunt of climate change in the form of extreme weather conditions such as droughts and floods – increasing the vulnerability of pinched natural resources – it is women and girls in agriculture and rural and remote areas who are most affected and unshielded from these events. Climate change effects exist alongside deep-set gender inequalities, and its consequences only widen this gap as women and girls, who are custodians of the household, are stripped of resources set aside to look after their families. 

Busisiwe Mgangxela, 59, a farmer in the Eastern Cape’s Middledrift who trains nearly 300 Eastern Cape women in organic farming through WhatsApp, told Daily Maverick that while all farmers experience climate change and its effects, it is women who are mostly affected as they are crop, horticulture and livestock farmers; forms of farming that require lots of water.