The Gender-Climate Change Nexus – A critical study of a gender-transformative approach to the international climate change regime

Abstract

This thesis aims to shed some light on the gender-climate change nexus. Indeed, climate governance might appear gender-neutral, but climate changes impacts aggravate existing gender inequalities. Because of this, gender and women’s considerations have been first ignored, and once they were taken into account, they were misunderstood. Therefore, the full and meaningful integration of gender and women’s considerations when addressing climate change concerns is critical for achieving climate justice and gender equality as it would provide for gender-transformative climate action. This paper explores the incorporation of such considerations within the climate regime and the role of feminist advocacy in this evolution. It is observed that the climate regime largely aims at a gender-responsive content but it is not achieved in practice in all areas of climate action. From this foundation, this paper then argues that the overarching strategy of gender mainstreaming, widespread within the climate regime, might not be sufficient to achieve gender-transformative climate governance. The adoption of a rights-based approach to climate governance, as a catalyst for systemic change, is then suggested in order to achieve a gender-transformative climate change regime.