Experts are urging governments, including Malawi, and Civil Society Organizations to act now, placing women at the center of climate adaptation and policy decisions, warning that excluding them threatens community resilience.
This was said during a virtual Cross Border Science Café on Gender, Health, and Climate Change on Thursday, organized by the Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (MESHA) in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, which brought together journalists from Malawi, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and Uganda.
The café aimed to examine how gender, health, and climate change intersect, highlight the disproportionate impacts on women, and explore ways to involve them in decision-making processes, policy development, and community-level climate adaptation strategies.
Making a presentation during the café, Teresa Anderson of ActionAid International highlighted how climate change disproportionately burdens women, who she say faces hunger, loss of income, and gender-based violence because of climate shocks, yet they are excluded from decision-making.
“Climate affects yields, creates hunger, gender-based violence, and forces girls out of school. Women on unequal footing face reduced literacy, and are often ignored by agricultural extension services,” said Anderson. “They have less access to updated weather information, which then sets them back again when it comes to resilience and climate action.”
She then urged communities, policymakers, and governments to fully support women’s groups by including them in climate planning, and recognize their knowledge and solutions.
“All governments should review paragraph 12 now and consider how they are implementing these great principles, particularly how they are going to roll out their NDCs,” she adsed. “Same with their national adaptation plans and other lens, just to include, make sure that inclusion and participation, mapping of communities is involved and making sure that impact is positive to communities and not negative, and then try to support the linkages with other public services, including social protection, education, health, pensions, housing, energy, economy, agriculture.”
Concurrently, Audrey Masitsa of Mission Inclusion, in her presentation emphasized the importance of moving women from being seen as victims to being recognized as decision-makers in science and policy.
“Women must be trained to have voice and agency,” Masitsa said. “They need confidence to participate in governance forums and to lead climate adaptation initiatives, even at small scales, proving their capacity to communities and policymakers alike.”
She added that her organization ensures women are included in co-designing solutions, from nature-based interventions to community adaptation plans.
Masitsa also highlighted the role of positive masculinity, stressing that men must understand and support women’s leadership. “Addressing harmful gender norms is crucial. Men need to speak out, recognize barriers women face, and work alongside them to implement climate solutions that benefit the entire community,” she added.
Speaking on Malawi’s perspective in an interview after the café, Dingaan Mithi, Programme Manager for the Journalists Association Against AIDS in Malawi, highlighted systemic challenges that heighten women’s vulnerability to climate change.
He said women in Malawi bear the brunt of household and agricultural work, have limited access to family planning and reproductive health services, and face persistent poverty, all of which increase their exposure to climate shocks.
Mithi also drew attention to the link between rapid population growth, gender inequality, and environmental stress. “Many women are not empowered to make decisions about family size, which contributes to population pressures and strains on natural resources,” he said.
He further stressed the importance of integrating indigenous knowledge into national climate strategies, saying traditional knowledge, passed down through generations, and can help communities predict weather patterns and guide adaptation strategies.
To strengthen resilience, Mithi suggested that Malawi must prioritize women’s empowerment, education, and equitable access to health services, warning that without prioritizing women’s leadership and participation, climate action in Malawi will remain incomplete, leaving communities more vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change.
Mithi concluded by urging Malawi to quickly take stock of its national climate change mitigation and adaptation plans, ensuring that women are placed at the center. He emphasized that the upcoming reviews of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and the third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC3) present a critical opportunity to integrate gender-responsive approaches.
