Gender, development and sustainability

The document argues that women's disproportionate vulnerability to climate change and environmental stress is driven by social constraints and unequal power relations rather than inherent traits. It highlights that gender-blind policies in sectors such as fisheries, disaster risk reduction, and sanitation often disadvantage women or widen existing gender gaps. The briefing emphasizes that gender intersects with age and class, meaning vulnerability is multi-dimensional. To be effective, the document asserts that interventions must move beyond simple legal changes or stereotypes and instead adopt multi-faceted strategies across household, community, and national levels.

• Women's heightened vulnerability to climate change and environmental degradation is primarily caused by unequal power relations, social constraints, and limited access to resources rather than gender alone. In Nigeria, cultural and political barriers restrict women's access to land and climate knowledge, making male-headed households more likely to adapt. In Nicaragua, men's greater control over land, livestock, and credit increases their capacity to adapt to drought. In sub-Saharan Africa, women often lack agricultural inputs, tools, and formal land ownership, while customary laws and cultural norms continue to disadvantage them despite legal rights.
• Vulnerability is multi-dimensional, as gender intersects with other factors like age and class. In Central Vietnam, younger, married, and wealthier women can use loans and non-timber forest products (NTFPs) to offset agricultural water scarcity, whereas poorer women in female-headed households have fewer options. Similarly, in southeast Cameroon, better-off women collect high-value NTFPs, while poor women cannot afford the lost agricultural income or lack information, a gap widened by the need to travel deeper into forests as land productivity declines.
• Environmental and development policies that ignore gender (gender-blind) often exacerbate disparities. Examples include the Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem (BOBLME) project and disaster risk reduction (DRR) programmes in Myanmar, both of which lack gender-disaggregated data and women's representation in governance. In Nicaragua, drought management policies fail to recognize vulnerability differences between men and women, potentially widening the gender gap. In sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural programmes not explicitly targeting women have primarily benefited men.
• Gender-blindness in the sanitation sector is particularly harmful due to cultural taboos regarding menstruation and hygiene. In sub-Saharan Africa, the sector is dominated by male engineers who tend to neglect the specific needs of women and girls. Conversely, a demonstration project in Bihar, India, showed that addressing gender-specific hygiene needs helped girls remain in school.
• Addressing gender inequality requires a multi-faceted approach across multiple levels—households, communities, development programmes, and national laws—because legal changes alone are insufficient. Effective interventions must combine household-level actions, support for women's access to value chains, data collection, and institutional changes.
• Gender differences significantly impact urban planning and energy use. In Scotland, women in low-income inner cities benefit more from urban green spaces to buffer stress and anxiety than men. In sub-Saharan Africa, women's transport needs differ from men's, as they make more short-segment trips for domestic and caring tasks using public or non-motorized transport. Regarding household energy, traditional biomass cooking exposes women to health risks and physical attacks during fuel collection; however, clean cookstove programmes often fail when they rely on technology-based approaches without engaging users.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2014). Gender, development and sustainability. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-RSB-2014-Gender-development-sustainability.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Gender, development and sustainability. 2014. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-RSB-2014-Gender-development-sustainability.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Gender, development and sustainability |date=2014 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-RSB-2014-Gender-development-sustainability.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2014gender, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Gender, development and sustainability}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2014}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-RSB-2014-Gender-development-sustainability.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }