Gender and Migration

Gender dimensions of migration, environment and climate change

Gender is a system of power relations that permeates every aspect of the migration experience. One cannot understand the opportunities or barriers to migrate, nor the economic upward mobility of some and the downward mobility of others, nor the desire to settle or return, without understanding how migrants are embedded in a gendered system of relations, with one another and with macro-structures such as global labour markets or states (Nawyn, 2010). To assess the potential impact of climate change on migration, we also need to tackle the gendered dimensions of migration patterns. A migration life is divided into several stages: From pre-migration when actions to mitigate climate change and help individuals to adapt take place, to the displacement perceived as the second stage of the cycle before return or resettlement in another location, and the final stage of the migration life cycle that involves re-integration into the home or a new location. Policies affecting return or settlement in the new location include land use and property rights, social welfare, housing, employment and other frameworks that determine whether individuals, household and communities are able to find decent living conditions and pursue adequate livelihoods (UNDP and ODI, 2017).

Gender is a determining factor of the needs and priorities of climate migrants and will be key for the design of inclusive policies that not only tackle inequality and discrimination but also vulnerability to climate change. Women are disproportionally affected by climate change because they tend to be on average poorer, less educated, have a lower health status and limited direct access to or ownership of natural resources. Both the process (actual movements) and the outcomes (rural-rural or rural-urban migration, out-migration) of climate-induced migration are also likely to be highly gendered (Chindarkar, 2012). Although the link between gender and climate-induced migration is still under investigation, gender remains fundamental in the decision-making process of migration since the assigned roles to men and women in family, community and society are also a defining feature of vulnerability to climate change. 

In fact, given their unequal access to resources and information, women and men have different vulnerabilities to climate change. The gendered process plays out differently in diverse societies depending on local cultural norms that entail gender roles, age, class and ethnicity. The masculinisation of migration is a response to the social inequality exacerbated by climate change as strongly related to livelihood, risk exposure and weak adaptive capacity of individuals and groups. The loss of livelihood is indeed the triggering event that sets a migratory plan into motion: men tend to migrate when farming becomes uncertain and once the household income is kept on the decrease (Miletto et al., 2017).