Around the world, climate change is being tackled, not just in parliaments and global summits, but also in villages and farming communities. In these local spaces, lives and livelihoods depend directly on natural resources, and decisions are often made in groups.
Globally, including women in action against climate change is seen as crucial. Especially in rural agricultural settings, women bear a substantial burden from the warming planet. But there has been little research on whether simply having more women involved in climate action changes the decisions taken by communities to combat global warming – or whether it matters.
We are a team of political scientists and economists who investigated ways in which women influence community solutions to overharvesting of forests in rural Malawi. Overharvesting relates to how rural economies operate and is a problem that often requires political solutions.
