Afghanistan

According to a 2024 UN Women report examining the links between climate change and unpaid work, women and girls do three times the amount of uncompensated care work as men and boys. Climate change disproportionately impacts those in the Global South, increasing care burdens, deepening existing gender inequalities, and leaving less time for childcare, education, and paid labor. Water scarcity provides an example of this dynamic. As finding water—a task that falls predominantly on women and girls—becomes more time consuming, the risks of sexual abuse and physical injury also increase. Droughts and floods also deplete natural resources, adding to the burden of sourcing and buying food and while forcing women to eat less and last. In Afghanistan, 61% of households reported in 2021 that women’s workload had increased due to drought. In the Central African Republic, crop failures linked to climate change place particular pressure on women tasked with feeding their families. Despite these realities, the increase in unpaid labour driven by the climate crisis is rarely accounted for in economic analyses. Instead, many climate adaptation projects rely on women’s work, branding them as “sustainability saviours.” The report argues that this approach treats women’s time as an unlimited resource while overlooking their health and wellbeing.