Climate change and adaptation policies in South Asia: addressing the gender-specific needs of women

This article examines whether the four countries in South Asia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Nepal, addressed gender-specific needs in their climate change-related policy documents. This study is based on secondary data, which includes books, journals, climate change, and adaptation-related policy documents. The findings of this study reveal that most of the policy documents have acknowledged that the impact of climate change has a more detrimental effect on women's lives than men's. Thus, these strategic documents are gender-neutral. However, none of the policy documents in the above-mentioned countries recognised the needs of women during natural hazards. Also, they ignored the suggestion of programmes and activities to reduce the vulnerability of women. This article argues that a gender-specific policy will be more conducive to reducing the vulnerability of women during natural hazards than a gender-neutral and gender-transformative policy. This research concludes with some policy recommendations, which are expected to help the policy-making communities in four South Asian countries formulate gender-specific climate change and adaptation policies and programmes.