Highlights:

This paper reviews the extent to which inclusive climate policy processes and policies reduce power imbalances and provide women with opportunities to increase their social, economic and political capacities and to participate meaningfully in climate and disaster risk governance at multiple scales.

This paper uses a rapid review approach, screening peer-reviewed and grey literature between 2010 and 2024, to address the following three objectives:

First, to assess the extent of women's participation in climate change processes across multiple scales. Second, to identify strategies for enhancing women's participation in climate governance from a policy perspective. Third, to identify strategies and approaches that strengthen women's resilience in AFS and address gender inequalities.

The findings begin with an examination of women’s participation in climate governance (Section 4 of the article), analyzing the challenges women face at international, national, and local levels. This includes an assessment of global policy processes, such as the UNFCCC negotiations, as well as national climate policies, including National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), that aim to promote gender inclusion.

The paper then explores strategies for strengthening women’s leadership and decision-making in climate governance at multiple scales (Section 5), focusing on gender quotas, capacity-building programmes, and incentive mechanisms that encourage women’s meaningful participation.

Next, the discussion shifts to policy interventions for enhancing women’s resilience to climate change (Section 6), highlighting best practices of policies aimed at increasing women’s access to land, financial resources, and technology; investing in human capital development; and addressing harmful gender norms. This section also considers the effectiveness of climate policies in improving women’s well-being outcomes, including food security, health, and protection from gender-based violence.

The paper closes with conclusions and policy recommendations (Section 7) on how to close gaps between policy commitments and implementation and enhance gender-responsive climate governance.

Based on the findings in this paper, the authors provide the following recommendations for public policies to more effectively improve women’s resilience and meaningful participation in climate change governance:

• Policies must focus on local resource mobilization for more context-specific local implementation spearheaded by both men and women alike. Weak implementation of many climate change policies in the Global South is partly due to dependence on international sources of funding and foreign aid, which is unsustainable. Given recent changes in the global funding landscape for development, low-income countries need to take greater ownership over the design, financing, and implementation of gender-responsive climate policies.
• Coherence across national, regional, and local policies is needed to improve women’s resilience to climate change. For instance, NDCs and NAPs must be anchored within NDPs, and other gender and development policies. It is also essential for national ministries to cooperate in the development of monitoring frameworks to track progress towards stated policy objectives. Performance metrics should also be established to track policy harmonization, integration, and effectiveness.
• Gender-responsive budgeting is needed to ensure that policy priorities for increasing women’s leadership and resilience have adequate resources.
• Successful and effective gender and climate change policy implementation also requires renewed political and institutional commitments and unified leadership from the government. The mandate of agencies responsible for implementing such policies must be made clear with continual support, irrespective of government or institutional leadership changes.
• Climate change policy and women’s climate change resilience should be pursued alongside the promotion of women’s full and effective participation and leadership in the design, implementation, and evaluation of policy actions. Evidence suggests that women’s leadership in climate change and disaster risk policies will result in more favourable outcomes that improve women’s resilience to climate change and disasters. However, even in cases where that may not be true, including women in policy processes remains a moral imperative.
• Most policies and national plans use gender quotas for women's empowerment. Quotas are vital to increasing women’s representation in climate change policy and programmes. However, quotas should be used alongside more comprehensive approaches (e.g. targeting gender norms and building women’s leadership capacity) and not be considered as a panacea for women's empowerment.