Critical Need for Gender-Sensitive Climate-smart Agricultural Policies: A Comprehensive Review

Climate change is one of the most pressing global issues, resulting from changes in an area’s climate caused by anthropogenic and natural factors such as increased greenhouse gas emissions and ozone layer depletion. Climate change impacts differ by gender, as men and women’s social conditions in different places influence their ability to increase resilience to extreme weather and climate events. Despite the fact that women are primarily involved in agricultural operations, they are often overlooked by information and service providers, unless their unique needs, access to and control over resources are taken into account during the policy and project design stages. This demonstrates the importance of incorporating gender considerations into various policies and research to ensure the effective implementation of climate change adaptation interventions in agriculture. Instead of focusing on each issue separately, it is critical to consider how gender, agriculture and climate change are interconnected in order to achieve this. As a result, this review paper identifies policy gaps and makes a number of recommendations for improving gender responsiveness at the policy level in agriculture, emphasizing the importance of developing climate smart projects with gender in mind by learning about cutting-edge gender-transformative interventions accountable for serving both gender.