Women and Climate Adaptation in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa

Delavallade, Clara; Gittard, Mélanie; Vaillant, Julia

Women and Climate Adaptation in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa

Autores

Delavallade, Clara

Gittard, Mélanie

Vaillant, Julia

Editor

Washington, DC: World Bank

Descripción

Sub-Saharan Africa is highly vulnerable to climate change, with rural women disproportionately affected due to pre-existing gender inequalities that both increase adaptation needs and constrain response capacities. This paper reviews empirical evidence on constraints to women’s climate adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa, identifies key knowledge gaps, and outlines a gender-informed research and policy agenda. Focusing on four adaptation strategies— climate-smart agriculture, weather insurance, income diversification, and migration—alongside adaptive social protection programs, the review synthesizes experimental, quasi-experimental, and descriptive studies to distinguish correlational patterns from causal evidence and classify interventions by the strength of empirical support. Across strategies, women face greater adaptation barriers than men, driven by limited access to finance and assets, insecure land tenure, restrictive gender norms, lower human and social capital, and constrained access to climate information. The paper identifies only two intervention types with credible causal evidence: targeted delivery of climate-smart agricultural information—particularly through female extension agents or joint spousal targeting—and multi-faceted adaptive social protection programs that address multiple constraints simultaneously. Emerging interventions, such as socio-emotional skills training, childcare provision, and land titling, show promise but remain supported by limited causal evidence, while frontier interventions—including digital climate services, gender-responsive insurance, and norm-changing approaches—remain empirically underexplored. Important gaps persist regarding women’s migration as a climate adaptation strategy, particularly in distinguishing long-term adaptation from short-term coping. By assessing the strength of evidence across interventions, this review clarifies which gender-sensitive adaptation policies are supported by causal evidence and where important gaps remain.