Rural women, climate shock: Beijing report warns

Priyanka Saurabh *

"Changing seasons, broken women," "Dry fields, empty kitchens, and tired women"
"The battle for water, stomach, and identity: Climate shock on rural women"
"The cries of women buried in the silence of the climate crisis"

According to the 2025 Beijing-India Report, climate change is disproportionately affecting India’s rural women. They are highly vulnerable to climate risks due to limited resources, traditional social roles, and care responsibilities. Heat, drought, and extreme weather are adversely affecting their reproductive health, agriculture-based livelihoods, and job opportunities. Adivasi and Dalit women are doubly hit by caste-based exclusion. The report also points out that effective climate adaptation requires gender-responsive policies, gender-disaggregated data collection, strengthening of health infrastructure, and women-led local decision-making mechanisms. Women must be recognized not only as victims but also as agents of change. Mainstreaming gender perspectives in the fight against climate change not only strengthens social justice but also serves the goals of SDG-13 (climate action) and SDG-5 (gender equality).

When we talk about climate change, the discussion often confines itself to melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and changing weather cycles. But its human face—particularly that of rural Indian women—is often forgotten. The Beijing India Report 2025 once again makes it clear that the climate crisis is not a “gender neutral” disaster. Its impacts are deep, unequal, and misogynistic.

Millions of rural women in India are already burdened by resource scarcity, social limitations, and unpaid domestic responsibilities. Climate change makes this burden even heavier—sometimes in the form of droughts, sometimes in the form of floods, and sometimes in the form of a slow, toxic combination of malnutrition and exhaustion.

The Beijing Report shows that the climate crisis is not only degrading the quality of women’s lives but also depriving them of their biological, social, and economic dignity. Health facilities for rural women are already limited, but the nutrition crisis and heat stress caused by climate change severely impact their reproductive and maternal health.

According to the report, persistent dehydration and anemia have led to a rise in the incidence of premature hysterectomies among women. This is not just a medical procedure but an assault on their bodily autonomy and dignity. Infertility, complicated childbirth, and difficulties in conceiving are now becoming common problems—and climate insecurity is clearly behind them.

Most of India’s rural women either work in the fields or engage in small agricultural work, but they do not own the land. When rains are unseasonal, when crops dry up, or when soils turn barren, these women are the first and the worst hit. In regions like Bundelkhand, persistent droughts have not only led to a drop in production but also increased seasonal unemployment among women.

Being cut off from the field means an empty kitchen, girls leaving school, and another round of debt. Women who were engaged in handicrafts, food processing, or small-scale businesses other than agriculture are also not spared by extreme weather. The Beijing report shows that women’s incomes in the non-agricultural sector fell by an average of 33% during extreme climate events in 2023-24.

This is not just an economic loss but also a blow to self-reliance and confidence. Climate-induced displacement, falling family incomes, and traditional thinking—all three are hampering the education of adolescent girls. When families have limited resources, girls’ education is one of the first to be cut short. They are pulled out of school and put into domestic work or prepared for early marriage.

This broken chain of education limits their lifelong opportunities. Adivasi and Dalit women in particular—who are already socially marginalized—are most vulnerable during climate disasters. During the 2020 cyclone Amphan, Dalit women in the Sundarbans region reported being excluded from relief centers and had no say in shelter decisions. Social discrimination becomes even more acute during a climate crisis.

The Beijing India Report not only highlights this crisis but also suggests clear ways to address it—most importantly, putting gender sensitivity at the center of climate strategy. State-level climate plans must incorporate women’s specific needs. States like Odisha have begun incorporating gender indicators into their climate strategies, but this initiative needs to be replicated in every state.

Gender-based data collection by village, caste, and economic status is essential for policies to be effective at the ground level. Creating a climate vulnerability index with a gender component at the panchayat level can be an effective step. Self-help groups and women’s cooperatives can be strengthened by providing skills in areas of climate-resilient agriculture, green jobs, renewable energy, and agro-processing.

Better resourcing of primary health centers, especially for reproductive and maternal care, is imperative—especially in areas affected by the climate crisis. Women-run Jal Samitis in Gujarat have proven that when women are part of policymaking and resource management, solutions are more sustainable and responsive.

Women’s participation should be made mandatory in local disaster management, forest rights committees, and water management. Missions under the National Climate Action Plan—such as Ujala Yojana, PMUY, etc.—should be redefined with a women-centric approach. Expansion of these schemes in climate-sensitive areas will not only strengthen health and livelihoods but will also promote gender justice.

Rural women are not just victims of climate change—they can also be agents of change. But this requires us to see them as partners, not just ‘objects for help.’ This is the message of the Beijing report—that if we are to tackle climate change effectively, gender and climate must be understood together, not separately.

When a woman scrapes drinking water for her child from the mud of a drying pond, she becomes not just motherhood but the most tragic image of the climate crisis. It is time for policy, science, and society to listen to her voice seriously.