Overview
Two of the most important concerns of the day are the climate crisis and gender inequality. As we get a better knowledge of the critical connections between gender, social equality, and climate change, it is time to begin working on solutions. Taking action today, from increasing the representation of women in leadership and decision-making to rebalancing care work and productive resources, is the first step towards a future that is gender fair and sustainable.
“Just As Women’s Rights Are Human Rights, Women’s Progress Is Human Progress”
What Types Of Women’s Rights Are Violated?
- Gender inequality
- Gender based violence
- Sexual violence and harassment
- Work place discrimination
- Discrimination based on gender identity
Strategies For Defending Women’s Rights
The following is a list of strategies for defending women’s rights.
- Invest In Women’s Organizations
Strong civil society groups must act as a check on the influence of strong corporate and state powers. Women right organizations protects their rights. Both are necessary for taking climate action that prioritizes the wellbeing of people and the earth. They help keep governments accountable to the people they are supposed to serve and bring the voices of those who are most qualified to understand their own experiences and needs into decision-making processes. Women’s organizations frequently serve as an unofficial safety net in vulnerable areas, filling in the gaps in government services and assisting with emergency relief. A critical component of constructing local climate resilience is empowering such community networks.
2. Safeguard The Health Of Women
According to the evidence, women will be most affected by climate-related health consequences. Women are often more likely to decease in catastrophes. Which is partially because they have less access to resources and assistance. That’s why rights of women are affected by climate change. The spread of diseases like malaria, dengue fever, and the Zika virus. Which are associated with poor pregnancy and birth outcomes, is being accelerated by higher temperatures. Additionally, extreme heat itself may be associated with an increase in stillbirths. These findings support the hypothesis that climate change will have adverse effects on sexual and reproductive health. Climate change increases vulnerability to gender-based violence, as do other crises and catastrophes.
Climate catastrophes also frequently divert funding away from programmes supporting survivors of gender-based violence and women’s health. These services must be improved and extended as the effects of climate change intensify in order to support the protection of women’s health and safety.
3. Support For Women Who Run Small Farms
Over the past three decades, 55% of the improvement in food security in developing countries has been attributed to programmes promoting women’s empowerment. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that if female farmers had equal access to productive resources. Their agricultural yields would increase by 20 to 30%. This might prevent the hunger of 100 to 150 million people and lower the global hunger rate by 12 to 17%.
Promoting sustainable agricultural practices also benefits from increasing the productivity of women smallholders, or small-scale farmers who oversee agricultural lands up to 10 hectares, or around 25 acres. Only 12 plant species and 5 animal species account for 75% of the world’s food, making the global food chain very sensitive to environmental shocks like shifting climatic patterns and catastrophic weather occurrences. Supporting small farm women means given the rights to women’s. Smallholders provide a sustainable alternative to the way we now produce agriculture since they often rely on a wider variety of climate-resilient crops.
4. Encourage Female Leadership
Women’s leadership and representation tend to be key factors in improved environmental results, both nationally and locally. Countries with larger proportions of female lawmakers typically enact tighter climate change regulations, which reduce emissions. Women’s involvement in resource management at the grassroots level results in more equal and inclusive resource governance and greater conservation outcomes. Additionally, community climate projects that fully involve women rights tend to be more successful and resource-efficient.
When making decisions, women are more likely than men to consider the needs of their families and communities, which is crucial for creating the kind of all-encompassing solutions that lead to successful climate action. Indigenous women have unique knowledge that makes their voices important in all decision-making processes, especially when it comes to agriculture, conservation, and natural resource management.
5. Invest In Care
The majority of women perform the unpaid and under-appreciated care work, which is crucial to the global economy. But even though this work is vital something we have seen more than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is rarely given the credit it deserves. Instead, it is believed that care work is an unbounded resource that may be utilised without limitations or unfavourable effects (much like the environment).
Instead, by viewing it as a service to the community, governments should encourage the availability of care work and provide adequate assistance to those who conduct it. This calls for increasing funding for unpaid carer help and growing care services. By providing paid family leave and flexible work hours, the private sector may contribute in encouraging unpaid care work. In addition to recognising the importance of care work, investing in it also boosts the economy, creates jobs, and lowers carbon emissions. Since care supports and improves human capacities rather than depleting resources, it is a sector of the economy that naturally conserves resources.
6. The Right To Move About
The freedom to move about at will involves both travelling to and inside the nation we now call home. But a lot of women truly have trouble with this. They might not be allowed to have their own passports, or they might require a male guardian’s approval before they can leave the country. By giving freedom to move means giving rights to women.
For instance, in Saudi Arabia, a recent campaign to legalise women driving, which had been forbidden for many years, was successful. Even Nevertheless, the government continues to persecute and arrest a number of women’s rights advocates for peacefully advancing their rights, despite this huge success.
7. Pay Equity For Equivalent Work
In order to earn the same salary as males doing the same employment. They would have to put in an additional 64 days of work each year. Stereotypes about the jobs that women and men should undertake. And the ways in which they should interact with one another in the workplace. Among the many interrelated variables that contribute to the gender pay gap. It is the right of women employee to be payee full. Discrimination, a paucity of women in senior posts. A lack of part-time or flexible jobs that fit family responsibilities. And variations in education and work experience are additional variables that contribute to the gender wage gap.
Why Is It Important To Protect The Rights Of Women?
- Women’s Rights are Human Rights.
- Protecting women’s rights makes the world a better place.
“Women are unavoidably only the bridge between generations, and what we accomplish for ourselves today are only the foundation upon which future generations of women and men will build”.