In the 21st century, climate change is the principal threat to humanity. The impact of climate change cuts across different sectors, regions, races and genders. As policy-makers seek ways to mitigate the impact of climate change and as the search for the road to a more sustainable future progresses, the intersectionality between gender and climate is yet to find supporters in the mainstream.
While climate change affects every life on the globe, social differences ensure that this impact is disproportionate. This also holds true for the impact of climate change on women.
Females are more vulnerable to climate change than their male counterparts. This vulnerability can be seen in how climate change impacts women on different fronts, including education. The effect of climate change on female education and that of a lack of female education on climate change is mutually reinforcing. Let’s have a look at the inter-linkages between climate change and female education and at the importance of female education in tackling climate change:
Survival Skills In The Immediate Aftermath Of A Climate-related Disaster
As climate change becomes a gigantic problem, ways to tackle it need to go beyond the basic technological measures. The emphasis on the education of women could be one of the sociological solutions in moderating the impact of climate change.
It is reported that in the wake of natural disasters, women have a higher mortality rate than men. A lack of education leads to a situation where women don’t have the necessary means of rescue when such a crisis takes place.
Greater access to quality education ensures that girls are aware, able and possess the skills to adapt to and to reduce the risks of climate change.
Mitigating Economical Vulnerability
As ecological conditions continue to deteriorate despite numerous conferences and agreements among world-leaders, the globe is sure to witness a spike in climatic disasters. Whenever such a disaster takes place, people lose their lives. If the male counterpart of a dependent woman is lost in a climate-related disaster, she becomes susceptible to economic hardship.
Educating young girls ensures that this economic vulnerability of women is reduced by equipping them to be economically independent so that they can survive in case things go wrong. Educating women in green-skills also ensures that they take up jobs in which they can be stakeholders in the subversion of climate change.
Reducing Sexual Vulnerability
Educated women are able to be in charge of their reproductive rights. In order to bring the fertility rates down and to reduce the corresponding impact of population on climate, the role of female education becomes necessary.
A direct correlation has been found between the two. Educating women around sexuality and reproductive health and highlighting issues of gender and power becomes necessary in the battle against climate change. Any condition of disaster is followed by acts of sexual exploitation and human trafficking with women as the primary victims of the same.
By educating women and giving them the agency of their bodies, we ensure that they reduce their contribution to accentuating the climate crisis.
Climate Change And The Dropout From Schools
In the wake of any climatic disaster, the first thing that is sacrificed by a family is the education of the girl-child. With the increasing global susceptibility to climate change, newer disasters are displacing more and more people and pushing even greater numbers below the poverty line. Poverty in a family impacts female education the most.
Girls are made to drop out of school and are asked to help in household chores. They are even married off early to ease the burden of the family and as water-wives. They also face hunger and malnourishment as their nutrition is not prioritized. Climate change, therefore, keeps females stuck in the vicious loop of a lack of education, poverty and the vulnerability to disease and violence.
The same system that perpetuates the exploitation of women, propagates the exploitation of the environment.
It is high-time that female education is prioritized and an inclusive solution sought to the issue of climate change. Until women are educated and made aware of the dangers of climate change and ways to subvert this crisis, a solution to the problem will remain as a far-fetched dream. The social systems that have oppressed girls and denied them education while upholding hegemonic patriarchy are the same systems that have exploited the earth and tried to profit from its control.
Until women are made participants in the framing process of deals and policies on climate change, till they are educated and empowered, finding solutions to the issue of climate change won’t be possible. By educating young girls today, we shall create change-makers of tomorrow.