While women around the world are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, their power to bring about change is often limited because they are less involved and represented in decision-making processes.
Advanced gender-disaggregated data collection and analysis provide all countries with an opportunity to identify inequalities and vulnerabilities as well as to leverage the vast range of women’s roles in impactful climate action -- as farmers, caregivers, entrepreneurs, workers and mothers. The subsequent mainstreaming of sex-disaggregated data in policies and strategies can contribute significantly to reducing structural inequalities.
International Women’s Day 2025 provided an important opportunity for climate transparency actors to recognise this reality and raise awareness about the downstream impacts enhanced sex-disaggregated data can enable.
To assist these efforts the Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency – Global Support Programme (CBIT-GSP) organized a webinar highlighting three countries – Zimbabwe, Montenegro, and Colombia -- which have successfully advanced gender in their climate transparency practices.
Organised in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT), and The Commonwealth Secretariat, the webinar gave participants an opportunity to learn from a range of current practices and engage with initiatives to exchange experiences and pose related questions.
Zimbabwe’s work in this area focused at the technical expert level, by increasing women's representation and participation in greenhouse gas inventory technical working groups.
Guided by their national Gender Action Plan, Zimbabwe through its CBIT project identified women with interest in climate change reporting, planning and policy and invited them to technical training sessions to build their capacity, confidence, and qualifications in greenhouse gas inventory compilation, NDC tracking, and other areas.
During the webinar Milward Kuona, Project Technical Coordinator with the Zimbabwe Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife raised the importance of acknowledging women's social circumstances and family roles.
“If we invite a female to participate in a training workshop, they may be pregnant or having a young child. So to facilitate their participation, you may also have to make provisions for the helper (baby minder) and the baby so that they come along for her to participate, at an extra cost of course. Projects and countries should make a deliberate effort to acknowledge and support these women by creating that enabling environment. During the CBIT technical trainings we had two or three such cases where we supported our female experts who had young children to participate in the training sessions,” said Kuona. Since 2021 Zimbabwe’s deliberate efforts to capacitate women have resulted in 38 women being capacitated and are at different stages of capacity building toward full integration in Zimbabwe’s national teams and participating in various GHG technical working groups.
Sanja Elezovic, Gender Equality Expert from Montenegro spoke about implementation of Montenegro's national legislation, that sets out the obligation of all institutions to integrate gender considerations in all national policies and to collect sex - disaggregated data. From 2017, Montenegro regularly integrates gender considerations and available sex – disaggregated data in climate change reports (National Communications, BURs, NDCs and BTR). In 2023/24, the two assessments were conducted, one aimed to understand the capacity of Montenegrin institutions to intersect gender and climate policies, and the other one to identify gender data gaps needed for enhanced climate transparency. The first assessment showed that the capacity of institutions is only at the basic level, while the data gap analysis shows that out of 69 indicators needed for climate transparency Montenegro uses only 14.
“Montenegro faces significant challenges when it comes to systemically collecting and analyzing gender data, and it hampers our ability to effectively integrate gender perspectives into policies such as climate change, Disaster Risk Reduction, sustainable development and sectoral policies which are important for all policies. Key issues include gaps in data availability, particularly in areas like unpaid care work and labor market indicators,” said Elezovic. She concluded that determined and sustained efforts to embed gender equality in climate policies are needed. It involves creating more effective institutional structures and practices, tracking progress towards gender equality goals, This must be supported by dedicated resources, efficient data management systems, and enhanced inclusivity and transparency through inter-institutional cooperation and capacity building.
Laura Carolina Nino Moreno, Gender Equality Expert in Colombia, spoke about the country’s experience in addressing gender through social, economic, and environmental lenses. “Colombia, like many other countries in the region, has made progress in developing institutional tools to work in the link between gender equality and climate action,” she said.
Colombia developed a methodology aimed at integrating integrated agenda approach into greenhouse gas accounting and estimation mechanism. The methodology applies gender focused questions to inventory categories, for instance, to understand the division of labor and different time uses, as well as the dynamics of decision making within households and communities and incorporates an intersectional approach that considers factors such as age, caregiving responsibilities, ethnicity, social class, migration status, sexual orientation, gender and more.
Colombia has also focused its efforts on priority sectors such as agriculture and energy - in livestock manure management in poultry and pig farming and for urban land transport respectively. Colombia’s methodology also identifies information gaps and designs of data collection tools to address them – such as mapping gender roles in poultry and pig farming system and conducting comparative case studies of Colombian cities to examine how gender issues influence travel, motives, and transportation choices.
These various experiences from countries show how systematic collection and analysis of gender-related data and information is crucial for the planning, implementation and monitoring of gender-sensitive climate policies and strengthens climate transparency.
“By integrating a gender perspective into transparency, countries can identify progress, gaps and needs while simultaneously enhancing data availability and understanding of the gender-climate nexus – key for effective policy planning,” said Wiebke Bender UNFCCC-Programme Manager for Gender and Climate Change.
In addition to showcasing country efforts, the webinar also highlighted the work different organizations are undertaking to advance gender mainstreaming in climate policies and transparency around the world. Snezana Dragojevic, Portfolio Oversight Specialist at UNDP, provided insights from UNDP’s direct support to countries for the preparation of gender mainstreamed transparency reports, with the aim to contribute to evidence-based climate policies and meaningful climate action. This work builds on previous UNDPs work on the Gender responsive National Communications Toolkit.
Hannah Swee from ICAT elaborated on ICATs efforts in this space through its impact assessment work, as well as through different guides for instance on Just Transition. Notably, ICAT recently published a dedicated publication on “Good Practices for Integrating Gender into Climate Transparency Framework” highlighting country efforts around the globe. Finally, Uzomaka Nwamarah, Climate Change Advisor at The Commonwealth Secretariat, featured its work on supporting its member countries integrating gender into their NDCs. To this end, the Commonwealth Secretariat has developed a best practice guide as well as a review of member countries’ NDCs.
Finally, the webinar provided a sneak peek of an upcoming “Toolkit for Gender-responsive Biennial Transparency Reports”, which is being developed by CBIT-GSP in close collaboration with UNDP. The toolkit explains the reporting process and cornerstones for gender mainstreaming, while also providing direct guidance on how stakeholders should approach the Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) and National Communications (NC). The toolkit takes a what (should be reported for transparency on gender mainstreaming); why (the information should be reported); how (teams can source the gender data and information required for reporting) approach and gives signposts to tools for further assistance and examples of good practice from across the globe.