This archive report was first published on 26 November 2019.
Climate change has led to a significant increase in male migration from Asia and Africa, leaving women to bear the burden of harsher working conditions and increased household responsibilities.
According to a report by the University of East Anglia, women are being forced to take on more work, including care work and domestic work, as men leave to seek employment elsewhere.
‘Male migration has been seen as an adaptation strategy for climate change - but from a gender perspective, it is not helping in household maintenance and survival,’ said UEA professor Nitya Rao, the report’s lead author.
Women in regions prone to climate-linked disasters, such as East Africa, are being forced to engage in risky work, including drug-smuggling and casual sex work, in order to survive.
‘The labour market is unequal (for) women. For instance, in East Africa, women have to go for more risky work... They are getting into drug-smuggling or casual sex work. That’s the only way they can survive,’ Rao told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The report, which assessed 25 case studies from regions prone to climate-linked disasters in Asia and Africa, found that women are neglecting their health and nutrition due to the lack of state and private support systems for families.
‘We need to find a way to support them,’ Rao said.
Experts, including Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, are calling for women to be included in efforts to prepare communities for safer and more effective migration in the future.
