Gender, health and climate change

This chapter explores gendered dimensions of climate change in the context of the health of women and men. The evidence on climate change is unequivocal, and the various ways in which this impacts on health are increasingly understood. Alongside global strategies to mitigate the threat of climate change and reduce carbon emissions, intergovernmental organisations and national governments are increasingly developing adaptation policies to help populations affected by these changes. The threats posed to health are significant, and include both immediate threats due to severe weather events, and long term problems associated with a changing climate. These threats are experienced differently by women and men, in ways that reflect both sex, or biological influences on health, and gender, or those influences which are socially constructed. Adaptation strategies across all levels of policy making and organisation need to incorporate a gender perspective in order to address the needs of both women and men, particularly in relation to health and health equity, and the increasing burden of mortality and morbidity associated with these changes now and in the future.