Climate change discourses, including Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, have
focused on differential climatic risks and impacts among different social groups of people. From
a gender perspective, women in developing countries are considered more vulnerable than men
due to their limited access to resources in relative to men. However, overemphasis on women’s
limited resources or lower capacities often leads to the stereotyped view of women as helpless
victims and undermines their coping strategies. It is also problematic to view women as a
universal group of the vulnerable, ignoring the intersection of gender with other socioeconomic
factors of class, caste/ethnicity, and age.
Findings from the author’s field research in two flood-prone communities in Nepal in
2009 show some key implications of gender and climate change. In these sites, vulnerability and
adaptive capacity were firmly shaped by the structural inequality of gender, caste/ethnicity, and
age. People’s experiences and risk perceptions varied by different adaptive capacity, including
location, economic status, educational levels, and access to information and technology.
Vulnerable people, including poor women and lower caste/minor indigenous groups, struggled
with on-going economic crises other than climatic changes. Unlike biased views, some
vulnerable people resisted against climatic and economic crises with their indigenous knowledge
and networks.