The Unfair Ways Climate Change Affects Girls and Women
Climate Change’s Unequal Impact
The hidden story of women and girls
Girls and young women often become targets of gender-based violence during crises, like floods, after they’ve lost their homes or become separated from their families.
In Ethiopia’s Borena region, where drought has devastated communities for six years straight, 13-year-old Loko* faced the news no schoolgirl wants to hear: Her parents could no longer afford to keep her in school.
Instead, they had arranged for her to be married.
This story, documented in Plan International’s Beyond Hunger: The Gendered Impact of the Global Hunger Crisis report , reveals how climate disasters force families into impossible choices.
When climate disasters turn girls’ lives upside down
“I was sad and worried. The moment I saw my school friends, I started crying,” Loko recalls. “My mother and sister gave me a lot of advice. I didn’t even listen, because I’m a child and couldn’t understand. I thought it was all just a joke [that I was getting married].”
This is the hidden face of climate change, a crisis that affects everyone but falls hardest on women and girls in vulnerable communities. From the parched earth of Ethiopia to the flood-ravaged villages of Kenya, their stories reveal how extreme weather events lead to women and girls being more likely to be forced into early marriages, face gender-based violence and experience hunger.
Three Stories That Change Everything
1) When the rain stopped: Loko's dreams dried up
Loko, a 13-year-old girl, was forced to get married when her family lost everything during the drought in Ethiopia.
The impact spreads far beyond Loko’s family. Millions of people are facing acute hunger as the Horn of Africa region experiences one of the worst droughts in decades, according to the World Health Organization.
What happened to Loko shouldn’t have happened – child, early and forced marriage is outlawed in Ethiopia. Yet 40% of girls are still married before the age of 18. And the drought is worsening this problem, because parents marry their daughters for dowries or believe that their daughters will be protected by wealthier families, according to Plan International’s Beyond Hunger report.
“Life is different for me now,” Loko says, her former dreams of teaching replaced by adult responsibilities. “I used to focus on school and homework. Now I have to do everything expected of a married woman.”
2) Rising waters, rising risks: Sofia's race against time
Sofia’s daughter, 9-year-old Mariah, feels sad that her home has been destroyed. “All our things are gone. I was playing with my doll. The floods came and took my bag, doll, books and school uniform.”
When the floods came to Kenya’s Tana River County, Sofia was at work. What followed was a mother’s nightmare turned to desperate triumph: She raced home as the waters rose to her neck, determined to save her children.
“I would rather lose all my possessions and save my children,” she recalls, now safe but homeless, like a half million others displaced by recent floods.
For women and girls, displacement brings new dangers. Plan International spoke with girls and young women in Kenya’s Tana River and Marsabit counties. Many of them said they had been forced to give in to unwanted sexual demands or be coerced into providing sex in exchange for the necessities of life. Often, many are afraid to report abuse and harassment because of stigma and discrimination.
Although nearly half of the world’s population lives in areas that are at risk of extreme weather events caused by climate change, 80% of the people forced to move because of it are women, according to the United Nations.
“We were not prepared for this.”— Sofia, a woman who lost her home in the floods in Tana River County, Kenya
3) No room to sleep: Jamila's story of survival
Pregnant and homeless after the floods, Jamila faces a mother’s heartbreak every night. Her shelter is so small that her older children must sleep outside under a net with their father. “Often, they cry the whole night due to hunger,” she says, her story illustrating how climate change creates a cascade of crises for families. “This is the situation we are in right now. Life is hard for us.”
When a crisis like a drought happens, men may move away to find work in more urban areas, leaving fewer family members to do housework. Girls usually care for family members, find water and help with cooking and cleaning. Sometimes, they are forced to leave school to do this work.
*Name has been changed.
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