Australia could learn a lot from Fiji, which has just published its first Gender and Climate Change Nexus Data brief, highlighting inequalities in how women and men are impacted by climate change.
The Fiji brief, in particular, highlights a gender gap in access to clean energy and in household decision-making. It also highlights a massive gap in access to clean fuels between households in urban and rural areas.
The additional unpaid workloads women take on in the home were also explored, an issue that is still sidelined in climate discussions and policymaking.
Last month, the Australian Government released the long-awaited National Climate Risk Assessment, which delivered a confronting look at the “compounding, cascading and concurrent” risks facing millions of Australians and offered the most comprehensive climate change risk assessment ever produced.
But the report provided few details on the additional risks for women and vulnerable groups and did not include a specific section or much in-depth analysis of how worsening climate change could affect progress made and the work to be done on women’s economic safety and workplace participation.
While there were some startling and specific mentions of the health impacts on women relating to worsening climate change, as well as the reported uptick in family violence related to climate change, these comments were brief and passing. There were also only brief mentions of women being frequently excluded from decision-making processes and a lack of agency to relocate away from climate hazards.
Fiji is taking a more focused approach, and it’s something more countries, including Australia, could learn from. Especially as conversations on typical metrics that aim to measure gender equity rarely highlight the risks to progress made following climate-related events, and as climate change worsens.
The Fiji report aims to help inform national policy and was developed in partnership with the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, as well as support from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and UN Women.
Climate change is a threat multiplier for women and girls, heightening the risk of gendered violence, added unpaid work, access to food and water and forced marriage.
Australia is not immune to such added gendered impacts, as Women’s Agenda’s 2023 report on The Climate Load found, noting research into the uptick in domestic and family violence that occurs in the months following disasters, as well as the added burden on frontline services, including early childhood educators. The Climate Load also includes added health consequences as well as disruptions to women’s health and reproductive services.