WHO Tweeted About How Women’s Health Suffers More Than Men Due To Climate Change

Climate change results from the degradation of natural resources like water, land, and fuel. It often results in hazardous activities like drought, floods, landslides, etc, and affects food security, agriculture, transportation, water resources, human health, settlements, and energy.

Most women are the primary caregivers, cooks, and even have the responsibility of most of the housework. There is always an unequal and unfair distribution of work in a household. Women are expected to take the responsibility of the house, and men must go out to earn the bread. But people often don’t realise how much the woman must be exposing herself to the various kinds of pollutants, unknowingly.

Poorer women are more dependent on nature for their livelihood, like water, firewood, and food. Climate change would cause a major threat to women’s life especially as they are being exposed to pollution and even food insecurity.

The World Health Organisation Tweeted About How Women’s Health Suffers More Than Men Due To Climate Change,
Women’s health often suffers more as a result of climate change due to unequal roles and responsibilities such as:

• Cooking which leads to exposure to smoke and gas- while cooking there is an exposure to the smoke if cooking on earthy chulha by firewood and gas if cooking on a gas stove. Both have harmful effects on the body and women being given more responsibility of cooking, she has to be exposed to all this even more.
• Collecting water and firewood- the change in climate results in a shortage of resources due to which people have to search for them. Women have to walk long hours to collect water and firewood for cooking and basic utilization, which means they are being more exposed to climate change.
• Food insecurity- climate crisis often makes people migrate from one place to another, which results in food insecurity. Lack of good resources like food and water, will cause malnourishment and affect human health. Women being the responsibility holder has to serve everyone and might even face unequal distribution of food.

The World Health Organisation believes that gender inequality is the key to tackling the climate crisis. Women are innovators and have the ability to adapt to an environment really well. But often underestimated, they can be given more power and authority of the land and decision making.

Over To You:

Practising gender equality at your own level can help solve the world problem. Women empowerment and gender equality can deliver promising results in a variety of sectors like food and the economy.