Zineb,
just explain to me why climate change and climate action should have a
disproportionate effect on women.
So climate change to start with...
we now have evidence that women will be disproportionately impacted by
climate change because they tend to be more vulnerable,
so they're less equipped to deal with climate change. I can give you...
there are three numbers that tell the story quite well.
Number one is 80% of the people that were displaced by
climate disasters in 2015 were women.
Second number - 12 million girls are at risk
of school dropouts because of climate disaster,
and that is each year, so 12 million girls each year. Why is that?
Because when these climate disasters happen,
we realize that families actually favor boys to
stay at school rather than their girls.
And then the third number is 60% of sub-Saharan women
work in agriculture,
and we know how much agriculture is going to be disrupted with the droughts,
the floods, et cetera. So we know that the productivity,
but also the income of these women is highly at risk.
So actually climate change will have a higher burden
on women when it comes to their health, their education,
their income level,
even their own survival is more at risk. You've spoken about climate change
disproportionately affecting women, but also climate action as well.
Through your work,
you've found that it sets back gender equity by 15 to 20 years.
Tell me more about that. This is counterintuitive, right?
Because climate action is all the efforts we're making to build a better planet
for everyone.
So it is counterintuitive to say that this has a negative impact on women.
So let me explain. Obviously women as well as men,
even more than men in some aspects,
will benefit from living in a more sustainable planet. Their education,
their health, their livelihoods will improve.
But what our research has found out is that women might also be at risk
of missing out on the green economy's massive investments and job opportunities,
or at least some of them. Jobs, for example:
we know that the green economy will be creating 65 million green jobs
by 2030. These jobs, the highest paid, the more stable ones,
require what we call STEM education. That's science, technology, engineering,
mathematics.
And women today only represent 35% of STEM students globally. So
they are clearly at risk of missing out on these opportunities. Second example,
companies in highly emitting sectors such as energy, building materials,
industrial goods, will be spending as much as $500 billion
by 2030 to upskill their employees,
meaning to get them green skills.
And the problem is these industries are male dominated,
historically male dominated.
So mechanically women are less likely to benefit from this retraining,
again, widening the skill gap between men and women. And then entrepreneurship.
We know that female entrepreneurs get less access to funding than male
entrepreneurs.
This is even more true when it comes to green tech.
So there are already a few clues to the fact that
if we do not do it right,
climate action could also be widening the gap between men and women.
And this is of course not the intention.
So what are the solutions? Can we have it all?
Can we have sustainability and gender equality?
Yes, we do. Actually,
you could even argue that you cannot do one without the other.
Both are extremely interlinked. So the solutions, number one,
is we need to tackle what we discussed in our first question,
meaning we need to have enough investments,
enough projects that support women in better mitigating
the impact of climate change on them. And that means supporting women,
in knowledge, in new regenerative agricultural techniques,
but also helping them to get better financing,
maybe even reorient their jobs to be in
jobs that are, say, less impacted by climate change, for example.
And this is what a lot of the conversations in COP today are about
because today is gender day, obviously.
And then there is the second part that we don't talk about much,
but that is starting,
which is bringing intentionality to
the other projects,
the other green projects that are not specifically targeting women,
because we think that because we're doing projects for men and women,
then both will benefit equally.
But history has shown us that this doesn't happen.
So we need to intentionally embed what we call a gender lens
in all of these projects to make sure that women will benefit as well as
men. And actually,
this is a win-win because when women are involved in
climate action, this has a positive ripple effect on the planet.
There are multiple evidence on the fact that when women are in negotiation
tables or that are, for example, mayors of big cities,
then climate action is even more effective.
Zineb, thank you so much.
My pleasure.