Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Climate change is severely affecting Mexico and Central America (IPCC 2014a) and has caused different impacts on men and women, regions and social classes. Several studies have shown that during disasters more women die than men. Why do the Red Cross, the World Bank and insurance companies only report the global number of deaths and damage, while other international agencies address the vulnerability of women and ignore the vulnerability of men? This approach has reinforced a woman-victim vision to justify their exclusion from decision-making processes and sharpen their post-disaster trauma. These behaviours also deprive society of efficient female support in the post-disaster period, when women have the capacity to organise refugee camps and collaborate in reconstruction processes. This lack of equity not only occurs in disaster management, but is imbued in all social processes of the present global patriarchal system.