DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2021.v09i01.001

Pages: 1-5

Climate change is a threat to world’s peace, security, and prosperity. The impacts of climate change are drought, flood, extreme weather, increased incidence of diseases, growing food insecurity and water insecurity which disproportionately distress 1.3 billion poor people of the globe and among them, the majority are women. The women of Sundarbans, India are not spared from the effect of climate change. Flood and sea level rise demolish crop production and cause sanitation problems, which seriously affect women’s ability to provide resources for themselves and their families. Forests supply food, water, and medicinal and cultural resources, and their destruction endangers the livelihood and health of the communities that depend on those materials. Women often work as the managers of household resources, and their workload elevates as they must find new sources of food and resources to support their families by travelling farther and spending more time addressing the scarcity of resources. Being a coastal area, the Sundarbans often face severe cyclonic events, flood, saline water intrusion, soil erosion and so on. During these extreme events, the women encounter sanitation problems especially if they are menstruating or are pregnant. The change in climate brings changes in agricultural production and marine fishing. This results in decrease in income as these two are the main occupations in the Sundarbans. Declining income leads to migration of male members to other states, other countries. In absence of male members, the female members have to take care of the whole family, have to provide social security, and earn money by doing odd jobs. So, the burden becomes heavier for women. Though women constitute half of the world’s population, tolerate severe gendered impacts of climate change but they do not have equal representation in Government’s decision-making or policy making programmes throughout the world. The present paper wants to explore that how gender is.....