When meetings of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began in 1995, gender was not a topic of discussion.
Photo: The first Conference of Parties on climate change (COP1), in Berlin in 1995. Credit: Peer Grimm - Getty
Gender wasn’t reflected in any COP decisions until 2001. UNFCCC bodies started focusing on the gender agenda in 2012, with a “gender balance goal”. And the Lima Work Programme on Gender was adopted in 2014.
Given the lack of traditional data on gender in climate-related decision-making, UN Women undertook a text-based big data analysis of COP speeches, to assess the extent to which countries have integrated a gender perspective.
Photo: Young people led millions around the world in marches demanding action on climate change days before the UN Climate Action Summit (23 September). Photo: UN Women/Amanda Voisard
There were a total of 367 speeches, in multiple languages, made by countries, regional bodies and international organizations at the three most recent COPs (24-26). UN Women web-scraped and analysed the 201 digital speeches by countries and regional bodies that were available in English.
For the analysis, a data set of 260 keywords related to gender was developed based on background research for the Action Coalition on climate justice and PARIS21’s paper Measuring references to statistics in national policy documents.
A total of 32 speeches (of the 201) made by an average of 16% of countries and regional bodies (15% for COP26; 17% for COP25; and 16% for COP24) mentioned keywords related to gender. Since some of them made repeated mentions across COPs, only 26 countries and regional bodies made gender-related speeches.
Saint Lucia is the only country that consistently made gender and climate action references in its speeches across all three COPs. The ASEAN, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Ghana were relatively consistent with gender-related speeches in two of the three COPs.
A total of 41 mentions were found in the 32 speeches identified, with most countries referencing gender-related terms only once. Countries making more than one mention in their speeches included: Uganda, Nepal and India at COP24; Sri Lanka, Saint Lucia, Nigeria, Nicaragua at COP25; and Iceland at COP26.
Topic modelling, a machine-learning model, computed the probability for words to cluster into topics, to identify some common themes. The most common topics repeated across all three COPs are in black and those common to two COPS are shown in blue.
How a message is framed affects how it is perceived. Negative connotations in gender-related mentions, such as 'vulnerable', 'critical', 'adverse' and 'degradation,' have decreased year-on-year from COP24 to CO26. Meanwhile, positive sentiments, in words like 'support', 'good' and 'sustainable,' increased from COP24 to COP25 but decreased from COP25 to COP26 (perhaps due in part to the pandemic).
This big data analysis sheds light on how the dialogue on connections between gender and climate change is slowly gathering momentum, at a time when calls for change are mounting. This year’s 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) focused on the gender-environment nexus, providing an important opportunity to rally decision-makers for accelerated action.
According to UN Women’s new empirical analysis of geospatial and survey data, climate change and disasters are associated with higher likelihood of child marriage, adolescent births, violence against women, and increased unpaid work burdens for water and fuel collection.
When women and girls’ needs in the context of climate change are ignored by the world’s top decision-makers, little progress can be made on these pressing gender and environment problems.
Speaking to UN Women ahead of CSW 66, Ceres CEO and President Mindy Lubber said women seem to have gained traction at COP26: “Women are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis and hold the key to equitable and sustainable economies yet they’re still excluded from the highest levels of finance. Gender equity is important in addressing climate change. I’m seeing more activity, more engagement, and acknowledgment of the unique and special role of gender in finance, equity and sustainability.”
“The interlocking crises we face today continue to compound each other’s impacts as threat multipliers,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2022, which focused on women and girls’ meaningful inclusion in climate solutions. “But women are the solution multipliers. … Women in all their diversity must be part of decision-making spaces, meaningfully and without barriers. This inclusion, including through temporary special measures, is one concrete accelerated action you can take to advance gender equality and identify solutions to the global climate crisis.”
UN Women’s report A Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice provides a concrete roadmap on jobs, care and climate.
In the context of escalating environmental crises, the Feminist Plan aims to guide policymakers on how to ensure that women’s rights are advanced, not set back, by creating new green jobs, supporting agroecology and ensuring climate finance is gender-responsive.
Learn more about our data resources, why data is missing, and explore our multiple data dashboards to learn more about gender statistics.
