Weathering the storm or storming the norms? Moving gender equality forward in climate-resilient agriculture

Much is known about the effects of climate change on women, and most research on the topic focuses on women’s greater vulnerability as a result of their reliance on natural resources, lower access to resources and information, and gender and social norms which inhibit their ability to take action and participate in making household and community decisions. Less attention is given to women’s active role as agents of change, their knowledge and capacity to respond to climate impacts, or tackling of the causes of vulnerability. The articles in this issue grapple with how climate-resilient approaches including climate-smart agriculture (CSA) can more effectively promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. How can CSA be implemented in ways that improve the situation and empowerment of women as well as men.

CSA has the potential to provide a range of benefits for women in adapting to climate change, if they are able to take advantage of them, and in fact, research presented in this issue and elsewhere indicate that CSA can be a supporting condition for empowerment. This issue attempts to begin to answer the questions of what are the key issues, gaps, and constraints relating to gender equality in CSA? How can women be empowered to use CSA to improve the food security and resilience of their households and communities? At the same time, it is understood that gender equality may be a process rather than an immediate result.