As climate change unfolds, its impacts on society are becoming increasingly more evident. For the rural sector, climate change is already affecting agricultural production systems and food security. The FAO (2017) reported that between 2005 and 2015, 26% of climate-related loss in developing countries occurred in the agricultural sector (p. 8). Given the marginality of rural populations and existing economic and social challenges, the extent of human vulnerability is expected to be substantial, affecting livelihoods in different ways depending on different factors.
Women are particularly vulnerable due to existing gender inequality, which is likely to be exacerbated with deepening climate change (UNDP 2012). Existing gender norms that reinforce male dominance and an unequal division of labor combined with inequitable access to productive resources (e.g, agricultural credit, agricultural inputs), credit, and knowledge and education already place women in a disadvantaged position vis-à-vis their male counterparts (FAO 2011). If gender equality and equity between the sexes does not increase, then women will face a disproportionate burden when it comes to adapting to climate change, inevitably impacting their livelihoods and those of their children and families.
Furthermore, the impacts of gender inequality, if not reduced, is likely to impact food security for both families and wider society. Most of the calories produced for human consumption – an estimated 70% - are produced by smallholder farmers (Samberg et al. 2016), and thanks to the feminization of agriculture in recent decades, women make up an estimated 43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries (FAO 2011, p. 7). The feminization of agriculture, coupled with the effects of gender inequality in the rural sector, and increased vulnerabilities to agricultural losses because of climate change will likely have a negative impact on agricultural productivity, thus exacerbating the already existent 20-30% yield gap between men and women (FAO 2011, p. 5). Closing the gender gap can help reduce such losses in productivity by providing women with the necessary access to productive resources, knowledge, and support needed to increase agricultural resilience and adapt to climate change-related phenomenon, thus reducing potential stresses to family food security and surplus sale to markets. According calculations by the FAO (2011, p. 5), closing the yield gap has the capacity to decrease the number of hungry and malnourished people by 12–17%.
This paper argues that one way to tackle the problem of the vulnerabilities of women farmers to climate change is through gender transformative climate change policies. These policies are argued to provide appropriate measures for the rural sector to confront climate change challenges while also considering including measures that transform gender relations, close the gender gap, and promote equality. But what would such policies look like (or not look like)? How do we know when a climate change policy is gender transformative? This paper introduces an innovative framework that seeks to, on the one hand, present a framework of criteria for gender transformative climate change policies and, on the other hand, apply the framework to two case studies of climate change policies to determine their degree of gender transformative potential.
Regarding the first objective of the paper, to introduce an analytical framework for analyzing the gender transformative potential of climate change policies, we seek to accomplish this by combining insights from feminist theories of gender mainstreaming (Daly 2005; Walby 2005; Porter and Sweetman 2005; Rai 2003) and women’s empowerment (particularly in the agricultural sector; see Alkire et al. 2013) with those feminist policy analysis (see McPhail 2003). The framework would consist of three main considerations – policy objectives, gender discourse, and means of implementation – each consisting of different indicators to measure the gender transformation potential of the policy.
After outlining the analytical framework, we would then examine climate change policies in Latin America, specifically those in Nicaragua and Peru. Both of these countries have made significant progress on enacting climate change legislation (see the Climate Change Laws of the World Database established and maintained by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Sabin Center on Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/countries/). Both also have introduced climate change strategies issued by the government and both countries have proposals for climate change laws making their way through their legislatures at the time of writing this paper proposal. Hence, in this paper we intend to apply our analytical framework to analyze the gender transformative potential of both the existing national climate change strategies as well as the bills for climate change laws. We will then report the findings of our assessment and discuss the potential implications of the findings for women, food security, and gender relations in the agricultural sectors of both countries.

References
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