The extreme heat is making some of the world’s poorest women suffer.
That’s the stark conclusion of a report, released Tuesday, by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, based on weather and income data in 24 low- and middle-income countries.
The report adds to a body of work that shows how global warming, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, can magnify and exacerbate existing social disparities.
What is the report looking for?
The report concludes that while heat stress is costly for all rural households, it is much more costly for households headed by a woman: Female-headed households lose 8 percent more in their annual income compared to other households.
That is, extreme heat widens the gap between households headed by women and others. That’s because underlying differences are at play.
For example, while women depend on agricultural income, they are only representative 12.6 percent of land owners around the world, according to estimates by the United Nations Development Programme. That means households headed by women are likely to lack access to essential services, such as loans, crop insurance and agricultural extension services to help them adapt to climate change.
The report is based on household survey data between 2010 and 2020, overlaid with temperature and precipitation data for 70 years.
The long-term effects of global warming are also pronounced. Female-headed households lose 34 percent more income, compared to others, when the long-term average temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius.
The average global temperature has risen by about 1.2 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the industrial age.
Flooding similarly suppresses the income of female-headed households more than other types of households, according to the report, but to a lesser degree than heat.
“As these events become more frequent, the impacts on people’s lives will also deepen,” said Nicholas Sitko, an economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization and the report’s lead author.
Why is this important?
Attention has grown in recent years to the disproportionate damage of extreme weather, sometimes exacerbated by climate change, in low-income countries that produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, per person, than in wealthier, more industrialized countries.
Less talked about are the inequalities within countries. Gender differences are often the most difficult to measure.
