Considering Gender in Climate Change Adaptation in a Society of Gender Differentiated Needs in the Malawian Context: Why and How Should it Matter to Researchers and Decision Makers

The last two decades have been characterized by a growing interest in global warming and climate change as a development agenda. It is beyond doubt, with an overwhelming amount of proven data and findings that the global climate system is changing due to human activity. The impacts of these changes are already being felt in most countries, such as Malawi, whose economy and people’s livelihoods are deeply rooted in the climate system. Global agreements have been reached and national frameworks adopted to combat the impacts. Social dimensions of climate change have however received minimal attention and quite conspicuously missing in most of these policies and frameworks is the gender aspect of climate change yet gender is a central factor in social organisation. The fact that resource distribution patterns and other economic factors revolve around gender makes climate change impacts gendered in one way or another and vulnerability by the same token. This has however been reflected with less attention in research, and decision making has more often than not left out the gender dimension of climate change and its related impacts. It is against this background that this paper highlights why it should matter to embrace the gender dimensions in climate change management. Highlighting and reflecting on different climate change policies, the paper argues how inadequately gendered these policies are and the impacts they may have on men and most particularly, women who are usually the vulnerable group and most likely to be affected most by the impacts of climate change. Through highlighting common and basic principles, this paper also suggests how researchers and decision makers can use different tools to integrate gender dimension into climate change management to make sure that development is equitable and policies are informed for the better of all. This paper thus offers as a founding building block of knowledge that has to be passed on to front line researchers, decision and policy makers so to align their activities with different gender needs.