Pakistan remains in the top ten most vulnerable countries to climate change. The frequency and intensity of extreme climate events is projected to increase. These events are likely to hit the poor and vulnerable first and the hardest. We are likely to witness an increase of around 5 million people exposed to extreme river floods between 2035–2044, and a potential increase of around 1 million annually exposed to coastal flooding between 2070–2100.
We witness these drastic changes against a backdrop of systems and institutions unable to adequately support human health, livelihoods and ecosystems.1
Climate change has different impacts on people based on gender, race, class, caste, ethnicity and (dis)ability.2 Women are impacted differently by climate change in part due to their reliance on natural resources, disproportionate care responsibilities, and societal inequalities that limit their access to resources and decision-making processes.
Care is an important way in which people relate to themselves, to others and to their environment. Caregiving includes household tasks like cooking, cleaning, collecting water and taking care of other household members like the children and the elderly. Women and girls perform the bulk of unpaid care work.
For every one hour a Pakistani man spends on unpaid care and domestic work, a Pakistani woman spends 11 hours doing the same.3 This work is largely done for free and when it is paid it is highly undervalued. When care responsibilities are redistributed within the household, it is often the elder daughters of the family shouldering the responsibilities. This is probably why about 2 million more girls than boys are out of school in Pakistan–or about 12 million girls in total.4
Caring for people is ‘work’ which requires time and labour, both physical and emotional. Climate change intensifies the work involved in caring for people, animals, plants, and places and reduces the availability, accessibility, and quality of public services.5 Climate crises often lead to scarcity of resources like food, and women, especially mothers, tend to receive fewer calories than other household members as they eat last and the least.6 These crises lead to health shocks with often several household members falling sick or facing disability. This in turn puts an increased pressure on women as their time and labour spent caring for others rises. Crises also make certain tasks such as fetching water, cooking, procuring food, and accessing healthcare more difficult on account of a breakdown in infrastructure and public services.
Caregivers in Pakistan in climate vulnerable areas are at the frontlines of the climate crises. My research from Badin highlights how women are facing an increase in the time and effort they spend on providing care. Owing to changes in weather patterns, women have to travel further for water, work harder, and assume more care responsibilities. Seawater intrusion and rising temperatures are key stressors leading to acute shortages of water available for domestic consumption. In the aftermath of repeated floods and drought spells, the time spend on collecting water, firewood, and fodder and rearing livestock has increased. These tasks are intensive and adversely affect the health and wellbeing of the caregivers. Walking in the sweltering heat towards increasingly toxic and remote water sources leads to severe health challenges while also increasing the risk of violence as women venture away from safe(r) spaces. Moreover, repeated spells of disasters also lead to an increase of their care responsibilities.7 During my fieldwork, I observed that that care is primarily seen as a feminine task with residual care responsibilities falling on the shoulders of other women in the household, particularly girls, crippling an expansion of life choices.
Pakistan’s national climate change policy recognizes these challenges and is cognizant that women are likely to be strongly affected by climate change as most rural women are engaged in the climate sensitive sectors like agriculture and forestry. It recognizes that women are more vulnerable during extreme climate events and disaster due to gendered roles and division of labor. It recognizes that their care work increases in times of crisis. As a policy measure, it suggests that we recognize and value women’s contribution in the usage and management of natural resources and other activities impacted by climate change. This analysis is sitting neatly and separately in a gender section of the policy and is not adequately weaved into other parts of it. We are likely to see this narrative remain in policy documents and not be translated adequately into meaningful investments. The Climate Change Gender Action Plan, which aims to operationalize policy measures and institutional processes that enhance women’s participation in climate decision making, is also not care sensitive. It looks at disaster risk reduction, agriculture and food security, forests and biodiversity, integrated coastal management, water and sanitation and energy and transport8 but there isn’t a single mention of caregivers in the plan.
So how do we make our gender and climate policies care sensitive? The 5 R framework for addressing care can be a useful framework to design gender-transformative care policies and programmes. The 5 Rs stand for recognition, reduction, and redistribution of care work; fair representation of Care workers in decision making and fair reward to be paid for Care work. This care lens will allow for an intersectional relational understanding of gender and would enable interventions to directly serve the needs of communities they hope to target. Efforts to respond to climate change will not be socially just unless the value of care work and the needs, experiences, and knowledge of careers are included at all stages.
A Care centered view recognizes care as a public good that is essential for sustaining human lives and economies. Policies and programmes need to redistribute care work so that it is not seen as women’s work or treated as a free ‘natural resource to be exploited. It needs to be seen as ‘productive work’ to be shared between the household, communities, state and the market.
A care lens would ideally lead to investments in accessible and affordable high quality care services and infrastructure as part of climate investments. This means investment in in public infrastructure such as better roads and transport, affordable electricity, functioning health and education systems, free water and sanitation and other essential facilities that reduce care work. To address the nexus of climate and care, we need publicly funded creches, child and elder care, and early childhood education. This would redistribute part of the responsibilities to the state.
A care sensitive approach calls on expanding social protection programs including food subsidies, cash transfers, health and social insurance, and welfare programs as an essential support to a caring society. Increasing the representation of carers and enabling their active participation and leadership is an important strategy for designing care responsive interventions.9 Lastly, care jobs need to be rewarded fairly. Care jobs like domestic work, nursing, teaching have a minimal carbon footprint and are ‘green jobs’ as they centre the needs of people and the planet.
Caregiving fosters both nature and nurture. Without a care lens in climate policy the climate crisis will widen existing inequities and leave our women, both young and old, further behind. The current global focus on galvanizing climate investments presents us with a unique opportunity to address both care and how people cope with increasing climate crisis.
Myrah Nerine Butt is the Gender Justice Policy and Advocacy Manager at Oxfam Asia. Her key areas of focus include care work, climate change, disaster risk reduction, and enhancing citizen voice and accountability.
1. https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/700916/climate-risk…
2. https://reliefweb.int/report/bangladesh/gendered-dimensions-loss-and-da…
3. https://pide.org.pk/research/making-womens-work-count-in-pakistan-measu…
4. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/education/facing-challenges-girls-educat…
5. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621353/…
A1670D6CDEAE669960CA548B264BB158?sequence=1
6. https://www.oxfam.org/en/facing-impossible-choices-women-bear-brunt-hun…
7. https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/caregivers-at-the-frontline…
8. https://wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Climate-Change-Gender-Actio…
9. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621353/…
A1670D6CDEAE669960CA548B264BB158?sequence=1
Reference:
10. MacGregor, Sherilyn, Arora-Jonsson, Seema and Cohen, Maeve “Caring in a changing climate: Centering care work in climate
action,” Oxfam Research Backgrounder series (2022): https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/researchpublications/caring-in-achanging-climate/
11. https://dialogue.earth/en/climate/pakistans-women-go-unheard-in-climate…
12. https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/missing-in-action-experienc…
13. https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/caregivers-at-the-frontline…