Burning Silence: How Climate Change Deepens Gender Inequality in Pakistan

A woman in rural Sindh’s Tharparkar district lowers a container into a deep village well, on one of thousands of ‘gallis’ (clans) that trek daily for water. It is estimated that almost three-quarters (72%) of Pakistan’s women conduct water collection and spend up to eight hours a day doing so, particularly in rural areas. In the arid land of Thar, where temperatures reach into the 45s in the summer, women and girls walk great distances in a scorching sun. Not only do these hours sap the girls’ bodies, which pregnant women who are also lugging heavy loads endure, but pull girls out of classrooms. Local surveys have found that this ‘ordeal to get water’ is a major reason adolescent girls drop out of school.

The recent heatwaves, particularly those with temperatures above 50°C in parts of Sindh, threaten the lives of vulnerable populations even further. The cooling infrastructure is non-existent and aid agencies have warned that these children, pregnant women and the elderly face heightened risks. But gendered suffering of this kind never makes it into the national climate discourse. Water scarcity and heat are presented as fundamental issues that affect all people, when actually, their consequences are very uneven (and are unevenly felt by Pakistani women).

Tradeoffs typically favour men over women during extreme disasters; these are made most apparent during climate disasters. In 2022, rivers and canals overflowed, flooding whole villages. On August 25, 2022, in Hyderabad’s Muslim Colony, a mother and her child were seen carrying through chest-deep floodwater in Pakistan’s 2022 floods. Dawn published a poignant image on September 30 in the article “600,000 pregnant women in flood-hit areas lack facilities: minister.” It demonstrates the harsh situation of floods that hit the people, especially women and children. A lot of women and girls were affected, and their vulnerabilities related to a lack of privacy in emergency shelters and to a higher risk of gender based violence were largely overlooked. Some field reports described the camps as ‘ill-equipped’ to protect those most at risk. The International Rescue Committee noted, for example, that women forced to move to new areas faced a higher risk of violence and exploitation. For both droughts and floods, UNICEF has tracked the pattern of families marrying off young daughters out of economic desperation.

This spells consequences out: girls are taken out of school, maternal health care dries up with over 500 health clinics destroyed or damaged, and families have nowhere to turn to for safety.

Gender Is Missing in Policy Design:

Pakistan’s climate policy documents recognise the importance of considering gender, but the implementation mechanisms are often lacking. For example, the 2021 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and accompanying Climate Change Gender Action Plan (ccgap) acknowledge that women lead in climate work and propose actions such as enhancing female representation in local committees, or gender sensitive budgeting. They appear, however, to be rarely realised, particularly where commitments are rhetorical, lacking detail, budgets or even time scales for implementation. One major shortcoming which prevents the development of targeted and effective policies is the lack of gender disaggregate data in climate risk assessments. Furthermore, women are not present in environmental decision-making bodies that directly influence women. Although climate change is affecting many aspects of women’s lives, experts have pointed out that women’s needs and views are still not being included in planning and response strategies.

However, the integration of gender into Pakistan’s climate strategies in practice is largely symbolic as they have little to no implementation, funding or accountability mechanisms.

Why This Is a Systems Policy Gap

It is not an accident or oversight but a structural failure. The 2012 Climate Change Act and Pakistan’s disaster funds lacked a built-in women’s realities. There is just no ministry or budget line that is responsible for bridging climate and gender. Many climate policies don’t consider how women face unique vulnerabilities and have important societal roles that make them ignored at the table, says a recent assessment, which claims most policies fail to unlock their deep knowledge of water, soil, and farming largely because women are not heard. However, women’s welfare and education plans rarely coordinate with our disaster response plans. Soliciting gender audits and female leadership is seldom requested by donors, but is used in irrigation or energy projects funded. This is predictable: When a heat wave or flood comes, most aid goes, and most people sitting down to write the plans are men, deepening the inequalities we must reverse.

Path Forward: Gender-Responsive Climate Policy

Addressing the gendered impacts of climate change in Pakistan will require deliberate and well-funded policy reforms. A critical first step is implementing the full implementation of the Climate Change Gender Action Plan (CC-GAP)—meaning adapting gender experts to all climate units, allocating targeted funding for women-focused adaptation projects, and developing accountability mechanisms to ensure that investments reach women in meaningful ways.

To ensure all of these important aspects are met, all major climate projects, including flood embankments and other similar projects as well as rainwater harvesting systems should be subjected to formal gender audits to find out whether they are guaranteeing women’s needs are met, preventing girls’ protection, involving women in decision-making, ensuring women’s displacement is prevented. In addition, installing solar-powered fans in rural schools and health facilities can be a low-cost measure to protect pregnant women and children from extreme heat. Employing local women in solar pump technician or water quality monitor trainings not only offers employment but also includes the active participation of these women in village planning committees.

However, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, in collaboration with Swiss Re, has launched a heatwave compensation program for paying automatic cash payouts to women workers lost on working days due to inclement weather. Now, women in Rajasthan and Gujarat have benefited from this initiative. The immediate relief of women affected by income disruptions brought about by climate-induced disruptions could be offered by adapting such gender responsive social protection schemes from Pakistan.

Additionally, community-based rainwater harvesting programs that have worked in some parts of India and Bangladesh have reduced the time women have been spending finding water, thereby improving women’s health and economic productivity. Pakistan can adopt and scale such initiatives, appropriate to the local context. It is essential to ensure gender responsive budgeting and accountability in climate finance. Pakistan has obtained $1.3 billion in concessional climate funding from the International Monetary Fund’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust for supporting emission reduction, climate adaptation and economic resilience against climate-related shocks. Such funds should be allocated and monitored using a gender lens to ensure that such funds are equitable or no benefits.

To conclude, Pakistan cannot marginalise women in climate policy and action. Women today are delivering resilience as they are the vanguards with flood relief camps, solar cooling centres, and even managing community water resources. This reality must be caught up by national policies, laws, and budgets that deliberately embed gender directly into all parts of the climate game, not just for fairness but to strengthen the country’s resilience broadly in a warming world.

Sources: Drawn from reports by the Pakistan Meteorological Department and UN agencies on heatwaves and floods, and analyses by UN Women, UNICEF/UNFPA, SDPI, LEAD and others on gender-climate impacts.