Global warming is especially bad for female-led families, says research

Extreme heat is making some of the world’s poorest women poorer.

That’s the grim conclusion of a report released Tuesday by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, based on weather and income data in 24 low- and middle-income countries.

The report contributes to a body of work showing how global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels can widen and worsen existing social inequalities.

What does the report find?

The report finds that while heat stress is costly for all rural households, it is significantly more expensive for female-headed households: female-headed households lose 8 percent more of their annual income compared to other households.

That is, extreme heat increases inequality between female-headed and female-headed households. This is because underlying differences play a role.

For example, although women depend on agricultural income, they alone represent the population 12.6 percent of landowners worldwide, according to United Nations Development Program estimates. This means that female-headed households are unlikely to have access to essential services such as loans, crop insurance and agricultural extension services to help them adapt to climate change.

The report is based on household survey data between 2010 and 2020, supplemented with temperature and precipitation data over a period of 70 years.

The long-term effect of global warming is also pronounced. Female-headed households lose 34 percent more income, compared to others, when the long-term average temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius.

The average temperature on Earth has already risen by about 1.2 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the industrial age.

According to the report, floods similarly depress the incomes of female-headed households more than other types of households, but less so than heat.

“As these events become more common, the impact on people’s lives will become greater,” said Nicholas Sitko, an economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization and lead author of the report.

Why does it matter?

There has been increasing attention in recent years to the disproportionate damage of extreme weather, sometimes exacerbated by climate change, on low-income countries that emit far fewer greenhouse gases per person than richer, more industrialized countries.

What is less often discussed are the inequalities within countries. Gender differences are often the most difficult to quantify.