Easy Digest: The links between climate change and the care economy
- Climate change and the care economy are intrinsically linked.
- Climate change and environmental degradation exacerbate women’s and girls’ disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care, communal and domestic work.
- Women and girls with scarce resources and low incomes living in the Global South are most critically affected by the climate-care nexus. In low-income countries, women in rural areas spend up to 14 hours a day doing unpaid care work, which is five times more than men do in such communities.
- Despite this, strategies for climate adaptation and mitigation pay insufficient attention to how care work is impacted by the climate emergency.
- In order to tackle climate and care together, funders should commit resources and support to climate initiatives that are both ‘care sensitive’ and have a ‘gender-transformative approach’.
