Gender and adaptive capacity in climate change scholarship of developing countries: a systematic review of literature

People in developing countries face the difficult task of coping with climate change impacts given their socioeconomic struggles. Gender, along with other social factors, plays divisive roles to regulate people’s capacities to respond to climate crises. This paper undertakes a systematic review of the literature to explore the trends of research in developing countries on gender and adaptive capacity concerns. Leximancer was employed to undertake textual analysis of research articles (n = 59) published from 2010 to 2020. Thematic and concept analysis indicated that agriculture-related concerns were the key topic to prompt discussion on gender and adaptive capacities of vulnerable people. Concepts of power, social norms, control over assets, and decision-making processes were found to have a joint effect on the capacity building of vulnerable people, particularly women. The findings suggested that while discussing vulnerability and adaptive capacity of women, the associated subjects of discussion such as income, organization, community, water, food, farming, security, and land vary in African and Asian countries. The growing attention in adaptation research to better understand the opportunities to adequately support women’s adaptive capacities will require focusing on a collective approach of incorporating social, cultural, situational, locational and historical contexts of gendered climate vulnerabilities in society.