Analysis of gender equality in climate governance

Abstract

Gender equality is a yardstick for measuring the progress of social civilization and an important goal for mankind to achieve sustainable development. The importance of women in the global governance of climate change is self-evident. During the global climate change governance, it is very crucial to focus on achieving gender equality. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is the main channel of global climate change governance, the gender-specific climate change agenda started later than other topics and the progress is limited. This article summarized the progress, deficiencies and future directions of gender issues under the main channels of global climate governance, analyzed the current status of gender equality in Chinese climate response actions, and pointed out the progress and deficiencies of women in the fundamental scientific research and the participation in global governance and decision-making. Our research finds that in the current process of international climate change governance, gender issues have received adequate attention. While in China, despite the attention paid to gender issues, the practical action on gender equality is still out of the mainstream agenda. In the past few decades, Chinese women have made gratifying progress in basic scientific research on climate change and global climate governance, but there are still great insufficiencies in the field of decision-making. In the future, China needs to pay more attention to emphasize gender equality at the strategic level, and promote the formulation of policies and regulations in the field of gender and climate change. Increasing the proportion of women participating in decision-making and management in the field of climate change and disaster prevention and mitigation is also important. China also needs to focus on enabling a gender friendly environment and strengthening research on gender and climate change, support women's participation in relevant work, strengthen capacity-building, and enhance women's access to resources, funds, knowledge and information related to climate adaptation or mitigation.