Gender, Climate Change, and Security: Making the Connections

Jan 25, 2021 | Chantal de Jonge Oudraat & Michael E. Brown
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Gender issues, climate change, and security problems are interconnected in complex and powerful ways. Unfortunately, some of these connections have not received enough attention from scholars, policy analysts, and policymakers. Many policy responses are consequently flawed. This has serious, real-world implications for the promotion of gender equality, the mitigation of climate change, and the advancement of peace and security.  

The linkage that has received the most attention is the connection between climate change and security problems, including armed conflict. Scholars have studied environment-security dynamics for decades and, in recent years, both the climate studies and the security studies communities have explored this linkage: The exploration has been a two-way street.[1] Moreover, this recognition of climate-security linkages has crossed over from the scholarly and analytic worlds to policy communities." [2]

Unfortunately, gender issues have been neglected by many policy experts and policymakers. This is true for both the gender-climate and gender-security connections.