Digital innovations for rural women's resilience to climate change and disasters

Women are disproportionally affected by natural disasters and climate shocks and their specific needs are often ignored in conventional resilience building mechanisms. Due to their gender and geography, women smallholder farmers face a double discrimination in accessing services, goods and resources to strengthen their resilience. Innovation and digital technology, if implemented with a gender-responsive approach, represent a powerful lever to reduce gender inequality and strengthen the empowerment of rural women, by improving their access to resilience building mechanisms, such as financial and non-financial services, that are tailored to their needs.

These infographics draw on the results from on an assessment of the needs of rural women in Senegal, Mali, Liberia, Malawi and Haiti, on an ecosystem mapping and on a market dialogue, which were carried out in partnership with UNCDF and with support from Innovation Norway as part of the project Digital Innovations for Rural Women’s Resilience to Disasters (D4RWRD). They illustrate the challenges that rural women face to access resilience-building services that are tailored to their needs and provide insights into gender-responsive policy measures and innovative solutions to respond to the women’s needs and build their resilience to climate change and disasters.

The outcomes from the research summarized in these infographics will inform policymakers and development partners on how to leverage the potential of digital technology to develop and deploy gender-sensitive solutions to increase the access of rural women to resilience-building services and products that are better tailored to their needs, such as early warning systems, microinsurance, or credit and savings mechanisms. Together with UNCDF and private sector partners, UN Women has started piloting these gender-sensitive solutions and innovations in Mali and Senegal.