As the climate crisis increases drastically, so do living conditions and resources for lower per income GDP capita countries. However, poverty has never correlated through equal effect, and the most affected within these countries are low class women, especially those within a ethic minority group. The range could be from exploitation, to mental health, and even child marriage, all of which create a cycle of domestic and sexual abuse. If climate change plans within different countries don't include or acknowledge women in these roles, many of these problems may be overlooked.
Mayesha Alam, a graduate of Yale University with focus on climate, states “women have been historically excluded from domestic, regional, and international negotiations around climate change, biodiversity, and resources.” Although she states it has improved in bringing women such as Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate being observed as leaders in the climate crises, struggling voices still fight within a majority of Southern American or African countries. As globalization changes these continents since the 1950s, a growing mass of men in lower income countries tend to abandon their families to live in cities in order for higher economic prosperities or work in cities or even different countries to support the family financially (Washington Post, 2018). Through this, "women and girls overwhelmingly undertake the labor (historically) of gathering food, water, and household energy resources,” (Alam, 2018). As climate change increases, so does higher labor for women in rural communities, resulting in young girls also leaving school in order to participate in helping their mothers and sisters in farm life, or even walk longer distances to find food and water such as the case in India Bangladesh, where climate change affected the amount of salt within a freshwater river.
Although women are forced to leave school, this could be argued as the best case scenario for women in low income communities, as the climate crisis also affects health, violence and even family relations interchangeably. With the prospect of child marriages, an example being Malawi, an estimated 1.5 million increase of child marriages could come within the upcoming decades because of climate change through economic collapse. There are several reasons for this, but the main three are the child is an economic burden to feed or educate, the family needing to create economic ties to survive, or the amount of labor doesn't suit the cost of raising the child physically with their needs growing up. Based on GirlsNotBrides
organization, over 50% of children married before becoming 15 are likely to experience both physical and sexual viloence with their partners. The girl's new role as wife also creates a stronger barrier for access to education because of family pressure, resulting in likely chances of doing labor intensive work.
The health benefits are also being affected through climate change, especially mentally with correlation of domestic violence. For mental health, living within a high drought or high climate change affected environment such as an island nation or desert results in an increase of “
trauma and shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, feelings of abandonment, and anxiety and depression”. In the correlation of economic stress and domestic violence, male partners are more likely to enact physical violence to women who have more barriers with employment. Although there are contradictive findings on women who are employed or unemployed their relationship to domestic violence, there is a strong correlation that in more stress induced environments, male partners tend to create a dominant and controlling role compared to female partners, even if not in the environment or in long distance relationships. In the case of a climate devastated environment such as the aftermath of a storm or higher than average drought season, this event could lead to more labor being introduced to female partners, creating stronger barriers to leave from a household that their children are dependent apon. The amount of stress within a household is also known for influencing decisions such as child marriages in families as well, such as the stress of raising the child and not having time to look over family land. Either way, mental health is a strong component even without anxiety of the future. Despite this being a problem many of these countries do not have supported infrastructure for mental health, and even less access for women. “ A 2021 WHO survey of 95 countries found that only 9 have thus far included mental health and psychosocial support in their national health and climate change plans.” (WHO, 2022). With the low amount of emphasis on climate change and mental health, it would only not solve the intended domestic problem within rural communities.
Women represent around 43% of the global agricultural workforce, however because of domestic barriers, they do not have much of a say in how resources are given or what is needed for them to succeed in having proper education and health. Stressors from climate change also affect outside the rural household, as, through lack of land use, exploitation such as human trafficking or labor exploration increase, and is especially targeted towards women and minority groups. Overall, women need more representation when dealing with climate change since they are who are most affected.
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Kidman, “Child marriage and intimate partner violence: a comparative study of 34 countries”, girlsnotbrides.org, International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 46, Issue 2, 1 April 2017, Pages 662–675
Larkin V. “Economic Stress and Domestic Violence” vawnet.org, VAWnet: The National Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women, Sept 2009, Oct 2022
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