Gender Inequality in the Global Warming Era: The Disparate Impact of Climate Change on Female

Abstract

The climate change crisis has gained unprecedented urgency in the most recent decade. Overall, climate change has already led to and will continuously lead to environmental tipping points and irreversible lock-ins that will decrease the common welfare. When taking a closer look at the macroeconomic growth prospects as measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per country, a changing climate will affect countries differently, when considering different mean temperatures but also differences in the GDP sector composition per country and a differing peak temperature per GDP sector for optimal production levels. Within society, climate change has a disparate impact of sustainability on female. Female are traditionally the household caretakers who face a disproportional burden of sustainability pledges. As economic gains and losses from a warming earth are distributed unequally within society, ethical imperatives lead to the pledge to redistribute economic opportunities due to climate change to parts of society that lose from global warming in the quest for climate justice. While between countries but also over generations’ differences in climate change gains and losses lead to unique and unprecedented tax-and-bonds climate change gains and losses distribution strategies, climate justice fairness within society will require novel ways of measuring, monitoring and distributing gains and burdens’ distribution strategies, also between household members. The regular redistribution mechanisms of taxation, as used between countries or consumers, and climate bonds with diversified interest rates and maturity yield regimes, as a rebalancing between generations, needs to be extended on the gender imbalance and family or community level. The novel policy recommendation of this chapter calls for more interpersonal research on climate change burden sharing and socio-psychological mechanisms such as trust, future orientation, compassion and social responsibility – all powerful female attributes that can drive climate leadership-in-action. We will need redistribution mechanisms that are more diversified than monetary redistribution to shift and balance gender interactions that have gotten skewed due to climate change. Areas of concern are disparate impacts of Zero Waste strategies on women as household caretakers but also the long-term burden the novel Coronavirus crisis has on women, who are particularly prone to develop long-term disability as COVID-19 Long Haulers. Addressing all the mentioned areas of concern in future public policymaking will ensure to share the burden but also the benefits of climate change within the most granular micro-level of society where it seems to matter at most for the individual.