Empowering Rural Women Against Climate Change

Explore how climate change disproportionately affects rural women in Pakistan, who play crucial roles in agriculture and community resilience. Learn about the importance of empowering these women to an economic and environmental sustainability.

POLICY BRIEFS

Amna Yousaf, M. Amjed Iqbal & Azhar Abbas

9/8/2026

Long before the sun rises over the dusty, canal-irrigated villages of Southern Punjab, many rural women have already begun their day. A child may cling to their back as they collect fuelwood, search for water, prepare food, care for livestock, and work in fields that they help cultivate but rarely own. Their labor sustains rural households and agricultural production, yet their contribution often remains economically invisible. This is not a distant image of rural life; it remains an everyday reality for millions of women in Pakistan, made increasingly difficult by climate change.

Climate crisis rarely affects all people equally. It emerges gradually through declining water availability, cracked soils, failed crops, rising temperatures, and shrinking household incomes before arriving suddenly through floods, droughts, and other extreme events. Women, particularly poor rural women, often experience these pressures most severely because they have fewer assets, limited access to land and finance, and less influence over household and community decisions.

Pakistan's devastating 2022 floods demonstrated the human cost of this vulnerability. Millions of women were affected, losing homes, livestock, crops, savings, and access to essential services. Pregnant women faced serious disruptions in healthcare, while displaced women and girls encountered heightened risks to their safety and dignity. The destruction of homes and livelihoods also increased women's unpaid responsibilities, as they struggled to secure food, water, fuel, and care for children and other family members.

More recent flooding has reinforced these concerns. When agricultural land is submerged, rural women lose not only food and income but also the value of their largely unrecognized labor. Yet women frequently remain underrepresented in decisions concerning relief, reconstruction, and climate adaptation. Pakistan's climate challenge is therefore also a question of gender justice. Building climate resilience will require recognizing rural women not merely as victims of climate change, but as farmers, workers, knowledge holders, and essential decision-makers in shaping a more resilient future.

The Invisible Workforce and the Growing Burden of Climate Change

Rural women are among the most important yet least recognized contributors to Pakistan's agricultural economy. They plant seeds, transplant crops, weed fields, harvest produce, care for livestock, process food, and manage many essential household activities. Yet their contribution remains largely invisible in economic statistics, landownership patterns, and agricultural decision-making. Women are estimated to make up a substantial share of Pakistan's agricultural workforce, but their ownership and control of agricultural land remain extremely limited. This gap between labor and ownership creates a profound structural vulnerability.

For many rural women, agriculture is not simply employment; it is combined with an extensive range of unpaid household responsibilities. A typical day may begin before sunrise with preparing food, caring for children and elderly family members, collecting water, tending livestock, and gathering fuel. These responsibilities are followed by long hours of agricultural work. After returning from the fields, household duties continue. Much of this labor is unpaid, unrecorded, and treated as an extension of women's domestic responsibilities rather than as a productive contribution to the rural economy.

Climate change is making this burden increasingly difficult to sustain. Declining groundwater levels and unreliable water supplies force women to travel longer distances to collect water. Deforestation and environmental degradation can increase the time required to obtain fuel and other natural resources. Erratic rainfall, droughts, floods, and pest outbreaks reduce agricultural productivity, requiring greater labor while generating increasingly uncertain returns. Extreme heat further exposes women working in fields and performing outdoor household tasks to dehydration, exhaustion, and other health risks.

The consequences extend beyond physical hardship. Women who lack land titles often face difficulties accessing agricultural credit, crop insurance, extension services, compensation, and government support programs. Their limited participation in household and community decision-making can also restrict their ability to adopt climate-resilient crops, technologies, or livelihood strategies.

Pakistan's climate challenge therefore cannot be addressed solely through improved infrastructure or agricultural technology. Climate resilience must also recognize women as farmers, resource managers, economic actors, and decision-makers. Without strengthening women's land rights, access to finance, agricultural services, and participation in climate planning, the country will continue asking its most invisible workforce to carry an increasingly unsustainable burden.

Women as Pakistan’s Frontline Responders to Climate Change

When climate-related disasters strike, rural women are often among the first to respond, even though their role is rarely formally recognized. During floods, droughts, heatwaves, and other emergencies, women frequently become the immediate managers of household survival. They rescue and care for children, protect livestock where possible, secure food and drinking water, salvage household belongings, and find ways to shelter families. As disasters continue, they also take responsibility for caring for the sick, elderly, and traumatized. Yet most perform these critical roles without formal training, equipment, financial resources, or representation in disaster-management institutions.

Pakistan's climate policies increasingly acknowledge the importance of gender-responsive adaptation. The Climate Change Gender Action Plan, developed with support from IUCN Pakistan, emphasizes women's participation in climate-resilient agriculture, natural-resource management, disaster preparedness, and decision-making. However, translating policy commitments into meaningful change at the village level remains a major challenge. Many rural women still lack access to land, credit, extension services, climate information, technology, and formal institutions where recovery and adaptation decisions are made.

Pakistan therefore faces an important choice. Continuing with existing inequalities will mean that every flood, drought, and heatwave further deepens women's vulnerability. A more resilient future requires recognizing women not simply as victims of climate change but as essential actors in adaptation and recovery. Strengthening women's land and inheritance rights, expanding access to agricultural credit and insurance, providing climate-smart farming training, and ensuring meaningful participation in local disaster-management and development institutions are essential steps.

This is not merely a question of social justice. It is a practical requirement for effective climate adaptation. Women already possess extensive knowledge of household resource management, farming, livestock care, food preservation, and community survival. Ignoring this knowledge weakens adaptation strategies from the outset. Empowering women can strengthen household food security, diversify livelihoods, improve disaster preparedness, and increase community resilience. Pakistan's ability to confront climate change will depend not only on infrastructure and technology, but also on whether the women already standing on the frontline are finally given the rights, resources, and voice to lead.

From Invisible Workers to Climate Leaders

The woman who walks towards a dry well before sunrise is not a symbol of an unchanging rural tradition. She is a warning about Pakistan's future. Her footsteps are repeated every day in villages across Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where climate change is making already difficult lives increasingly uncertain. Her hands plant crops, harvest food, care for livestock, collect water and fuel, prepare meals, and sustain families. Yet despite these contributions, her experiences and knowledge remain largely absent from many decisions about agriculture, climate adaptation, disaster recovery, and rural development.

Pakistan's future will depend partly on whether these women are finally recognized as active participants in climate resilience rather than simply as vulnerable victims of climate disasters. When the next flood, drought, or heatwave arrives, rural women will again be among the first to respond. They will protect children, secure food, care for livestock, search for water, nurse the sick, and attempt to rebuild damaged households. The question is whether they will continue to face these responsibilities alone or whether policies will provide them with the resources, rights, and institutional support necessary to respond effectively.

Reforming unequal access to land and productive resources will not be easy. Nor will changing deeply embedded social norms that continue to undervalue women's agricultural and household labor. However, maintaining the status quo is becoming increasingly costly. As climate shocks intensify, inequalities in landownership, access to credit, agricultural extension, technology, and decision-making will further increase women's vulnerability and weaken the resilience of entire rural communities.

Rural women have adapted to hardship for generations. They have survived droughts, floods, displacement, food shortages, and economic uncertainty while continuing to support their families and communities. Pakistan must now adapt its institutions and policies to recognize this reality.

The sun will rise tomorrow over rural Pakistan, and millions of women will begin another demanding day. The real question is no longer whether they will continue contributing to the country's survival, but whether Pakistan will finally see their contribution, hear their voices, protect their rights, and equip them to build a more climate-resilient future.

Conclusion

Climate change is not gender-neutral, and in rural Pakistan its costs are falling disproportionately on women who already carry much of the responsibility for farming, household survival, water collection, livestock care, and family wellbeing. Their vulnerability is intensified by limited landownership, restricted access to finance and agricultural services, unpaid labor, and inadequate representation in decision-making. Yet rural women are not merely victims. They are farmers, resource managers, caregivers, first responders, and holders of valuable local knowledge about coping with environmental change. Pakistan's climate adaptation policies must therefore move beyond viewing women as beneficiaries of relief and recognize them as active agents of resilience. Strengthening land and inheritance rights, expanding access to credit, insurance, technology, climate information, and extension services, and ensuring women's meaningful participation in disaster and development planning can strengthen entire communities. A climate-resilient Pakistan cannot be built while half of its rural population remains invisible. Empowering rural women is not only a matter of justice, but also an economic and environmental necessity.

Please note that the views expressed in this article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of any organization.

The writers are affiliated with the Institute of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan, and can be reached at amjed.iqbal@uaf.edu.pk

Empowering Rural Women Against Climate Change

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