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World Cup, heatwaves, but what about women’s rights?

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Now that the World Cup is coming to an end, everyone is concerned about which country will take home the trophy. But underneath all the happiness and the unity that football brings all over the world, some hidden truths come out every four years.

Evidence exists showing the link between domestic abuse incidents and major football tournaments. Research from Lancaster University shows domestic abuse incidents increase by 26% when England plays and by 38% if they lose.  Football does not cause domestic abuse. But factors linked to major football events, like increased alcohol consumption and heightened emotions, can make situations worse.

In today’s article, we will explore how systemic gender disparity affects the lives of millions of girls all over the world and how they are being silenced. Besides the World Cup, another recent worldwide event was the heatwave that hit the entire planet, causing multiple deaths across all continents, disrupting all sectors, and negatively impacting all our lives.

How is that impacting women more and not men and women equally?

By 2050, climate change may push up to 158 million more women and girls into poverty and see 236 million more face food insecurity. The climate crisis fuels an increase in conflict and migration, as well as exclusionary, anti-rights political rhetoric targeting women, refugees, and other vulnerable groups.

The Global North has been responsible for 68 per cent of CO2 emissions since 1850. While only accounting for 16 per cent of the world’s population, high-income countries generate 34 per cent of the world’s waste, which is often exported to lower-income countries that lack the infrastructure to process it in environmentally safe ways, contributing to toxic chemical and microplastic contamination of food chains on land and in the sea. Gender inequalities, along with other social and economic inequalities, intensify vulnerability to climate change impacts.

In the past 20 years, the number of climate-related disasters has nearly doubled. Women and girls are more vulnerable to disasters, in terms of both the immediate impacts and their capacity to recover in the aftermath, because of gender inequalities. For example, women’s lower levels of literacy and use of technology hamper their access to information on what to do in the event of a disaster, and poor design of emergency shelters can prevent women and girls from using them when weather-related disasters strike. Rates of child marriage are increasing in places experiencing environmental stress. Droughts have been found to increase son preference and sex-selective abortion, as well as the likelihood of girls dropping out of school.

While it is accepted that climate change has a significant impact on people’s enjoyment of a range of fundamental human rights guaranteed under international and regional human rights law, including the right to food, water, and adequate housing, less obvious and arguably less acknowledged is the effect of climate change in increasing the risks of sexual- and gender-based violence against women and girls. Aside from the immediate and devastating economic and social impacts on women and girls, it could also be said that climate change is an indirect catalyst for sexual- and gender-based violence, which is both a symptom of gender inequality and a tool used to reinforce the inequitable status quo.

 Under current circumstances, women and girls, particularly those in rural areas, risk facing multiple forms of violence while seeking food and water. In many countries, tasks such as collecting water or firewood are seen as “women’s work” and cases of women being physically or sexually assaulted when travelling to collect water are widely reported, as are cases of women being beaten, harassed, raped or even killed when collecting firewood in the forest by owners or guards, or women being forced into sexual acts in exchange for foodstuffs.

Somewhere in rural Mauritania….

Located in the Western region of Africa, Mauritania exists within a politically fragile environment. Coups have ravaged the nation historically and have created a resurgence of the practice of force-feeding since the last coup in 2008 (Schroth, 2020).

With the advent of revolutions in North Africa, combined with terrorist activity in the Islamic Maghreb, Mauritania is at the nexus of instability in West Africa (Boukhars, 2020). This is exacerbated by recurring droughts in the Saharan country, which has forced several families into poverty (Guerrero, 2013). These droughts have caused immense food insecurity in Mauritania, where levels reached up to 45.3% from 2019 to 2021 (El Bilali, 2023), which stands in stark contrast to the practice of force-feeding, which is to aid young girls into economically secure relationships.

The practice of force-feeding is known in Mauritania as leblouh. Young girls are sent to “fattening farms” where girls are subject to eating large amounts of camel milk, couscous, dates, and other foods, consisting of thousands of calories (Guerrero, 2013). Doing so gives the appearance that young girls are older than they are, therefore making marriage more justifiable (Tauzin, 2007).

Child marriage may be seen by families as a way of protecting young girls from premarital sex, pregnancy outside of marriage, rape, and even prostitution. By marrying a girl off early, the risk of uncertainty to her prospects or damage to a family’s honor is significantly reduced, although not the physical, psychological, and other risks to the girl herself. This justification for child marriage only makes sense where women and girls have no greater value than as repositories for family honor or where girls’ potential sexuality is seen as a risk that must be monitored and contained.

Women are underrepresented when it comes to policymaking

Despite their longstanding leadership on environmental issues, whether as political leaders (e.g., Gro Harlem Brundtland, Christiana Figueres, Mia Mottley), civil society activists (e.g., Berta Cáceres, Wangari Mathaai, Vanessa Nakate) or scholars (e.g., Maria Mies, Elinor Ostrom, Vandana Shiva), women remain largely marginalized from environmental decision-making. For example, globally, women are only 15 per cent of environment ministers.

Most of the work done by women is unpaid or unrecognized labor. Therefore, the making of new policies to ease the pressure on agriculture workers does not even take into consideration women, who work equally, or even harder than the men. As their efforts are overlooked and they lack women who could represent them in the policy-making process, they become ‘invisible members of societies’. The lack of social protection becomes the main facilitator for gender-based abuse of women or young girls.

As an effort to raise awareness and to offer viable solutions, the UN came up with the Feminist Climate Justice: A Framework for Action. One of the main points of the framework is the principles of Redistribution, Recognition, Representation, Interdependence, and Intersectionality.

The framework implies acknowledgement of where help is needed, a more equal distribution of resources, equal representation, and long-term collaboration.

Lastly, this is a message for all young people, not only: just because we were blessed with geographical luck, we must not forget that the girl in India who wishes to pursue education instead of being forced to marry a man she has never met, or the girl in Ethiopia who must put her family’s survival above all, still exists. What we take for granted and consider normal is a long-lasting dream of millions of other girls and kids out there, who are failed by their government every day. Even if sometimes we do think that we are powerless, even a small gesture can make a difference: educate yourself for those who can’t, read books that challenge the status quo, dare to think for yourself, and be the voice of the millions who have been silenced.

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