Gendered Financing Mechanisms
Climate change funds have only gained very small budgets, with only marginal benefits for the poorest countries and groups of people. So far, women are not targeted by these financing instruments. Even more, often the funds are lacking any social criteria guiding distribution. In general, gender discrimination is intrinsic to the climate financial architecture for the same reasons that women’s development in general is impeded: lack of access to capital and markets; spending most of their time with unpaid care work; and, lacking legal protection and ownership rights, facing societal biases in education systems, political processes and decision-making.
According to the Bali Plan of Action, financing of climate change has to be adequate, sustainable, predictable, and new and additional. From a gender perspective, funds have to be accessible to both women and men and target the needs of the different groups in societies.
Until now, climate funding initiatives have failed to incorporate a gender perspective, let alone mainstreaming gender into all programmes and projects.