Through its research workstream the Women4Climate initiative strives to better understand the interplay between gendered climate impacts in the urban context and the key role played by women in championing climate action in cities.

If you want Women4Climate to flag relevant research to be shared in the Knowledge Lab, please reach out to Women4Climate@C40.org.

You can download all the key facts here and the key visuals from our report here. 

Other studies

2021

Gender & Climate by Fondation L'Oréal

Gender & Climate is a report on how climate change impacts women commissioned by the Fondation L'Oréal.
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2020

Why Does She Move? A study of Women's Mobility in Latin American Cities

This World Bank study explores key constraints and facilitators to women’s mobility in Latin American cities. It offers a set of recommendations on how to boost women's access to services, information and employment opportunities.
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2020

Women Building Resilient Cities in the Context of Climate Change. Lessons from Freetown, Sierra Leone

This study explores an active role of women in informal structures of governance, including civil society networks and community-based organisations in building resilience to climate-related risks. Field work in Freetown, Sierra Leone, reveals that women engaged in local governance lead the charge for resilience building.
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2020

Mapping Gender Data Gaps: An SDG Era Update

Intersectional and high quality data on women and girls is crucial to delivering SDG commitments that Leave No One Behind. Data2X latest report outlines where there been progress toward filling gender data gaps and what gaps remain.
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2020

15 books about women leading the way on climate change

Yale Climate Connections presents a selection of books where in women consider the science and politics of climate and energy, efforts to restore landscapes and ecosystems, the history of women-led environmental movements, and different visions of the future.
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2020

Gender and Climate Change in the United States: A Reading of Existing Research by WEDO & Sierra Club

This report reviews existing academic and scientific literature to further explore the gender-specific climate dynamics in the United States.
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2020

Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design by World Bank

The publication seeks to fill the clear gap between policy and practice, intention and action, by showing why and how to incorporate gender inclusion into urban planning and design.
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2019

LA Cleantech Incubator: Accelerating Climate Action Through Startup and Corporate Innovation

The Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator and C40 Cities, with support from PwC, call for enhanced city collaboration with startup entrepreneurs and corporate innovators to accelerate climate action and help secure a 1.5°C future.
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2019

Kantar and Women Political Leaders Launch the Reykjavik Index for Leadership 2019-2020

This research asks, how comfortable is a society with women in leadership compared to men in leadership? Canada and France are the countries with the most equal attitudes towards men and women in leadership, whereas attitudes have regressed in the UK and the USA.
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2019

Kauffman Fellows: Startups With At Least 1 Female Founder Hire 2.5x More Women

Founders tend to hire people that resemble themselves: men tend to hire more men, women tend to hire more women. In this research, Kauffman Fellows used US venture-backed startup data from over 90k companies to look into a key driver to close the gender diversity gap in startups.
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2019

UNEP: When waste works for women

New report by the UN Environment Programme indicates that gender equality may be advanced by intelligent waste management policies. Case studies from Bhutan, Mongolia, and Nepal show that whilst women make up the majority of informal roles such as waste pickers, as system professionalise men are often the beneficiaries.
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2019

Catalyst: Women CEOs of the S&P 500

Women make up less than 6% of CEOs of the world's top companies: the S&P 500 as published by Dow Jones. Based on the January 2019 list, women currently hold 27 (5.4%) of CEO positions on the index of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
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2019

Nesta: The Gender Scaling Gap Explained in Four Ways

Only 4% of UK scaleups have a woman founder. Not only are women less likely to have entrepreneurial intentions, those who do become entrepreneurs are less likely to succeed, attract investment, and scale. Here, Nesta offer ways in which entrepreneurship policy can be made more inclusive.
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2019

UN: Pledge to commit to climate actions that advance gender equality

At the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in September a gender-specific initiative was launched to commit governments to clear action to promote gender equality in the context of climate action. At least 45 governments signed the pledge, acknowledging climate change responses can only be effective if they are inclusive.
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2019

Data2X: Using Facebook and Google Advertising Data to Measure the Gender Digital Divide

This research utilises advertising platforms to collect data on the gender digital divide. Both Facebook and Google online indicators are strongly correlated with survey data on internet access gender gaps and low-level digital skills; women are disproportionately less online in countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
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2019

Data2X: Gender Gaps in Urban Mobility

This article summarises a recent analysis of gendered urban mobility in Santiago, Chile as part of the Data2X Big Data and Gender Brief Series. These insights, utilising realtime gender-disaggregated data, can help policymakers design more gender-inclusive urban transit systems using mobile phone data.
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2019

The Beam: Why Gender Matters at the Heart of the Energy Transition

Co-authored by a former Women4Climate mentee, Mouna Chambon, this article explains why the development of clean energy schemes appears as a solution for both climate mitigation and women empowerment. With case studies from Rajasthan (India) and Chiapas (Mexico).
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2019

Nesta: Gender Diversity in AI Research

Nesta's analysis shows that there is a gender diversity gap in AI research, which is a cause for concern. To reduce the risk of unfair outcomes and ensure that AI benefits are widely shared, we need a diverse workforce to develop it, measure its societal impact and design ethical frameworks to oversee its applications.
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2019

BCG: Want to Boost the Global Economy by $5 Trillion? Support Women as Entrepreneurs

Increasing support for female entrepreneurs could boost the global economy by trillions of dollars, according to BCG research in collaboration with the Cherie Blair Foundation. Women who start businesses face more challenges than men; a critical issue is a lack of networks that effectively support and mentor them.
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2019

UN Women: Innovation for gender equality

This brochure from UN Women provides thoughts and practices around innovation that could accelerate gender equality and women's empowerment, in addition to improving women's access, participation and ability to innovate.
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2018

Project Drawdown: How empowering women and girls can help stop global warming

If we really want to address climate change, we need to make gender equity a reality, says writer and environmentalist Katharine Wilkinson of Project Drawdown. In this informative talk, she shares three key ways that equity for women and girls can help stop global temperature rise above 1.5°C.
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2018

IDIA: Toward Bridging Gender Equality & Innovation

A roadmap for practitioners, project officers, donors, innovators and others interested in sustainable development to begin to address gender equality and innovation more holistically.
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2018

Global Innovation Coalition for Change: Gender Innovation Principles

Created in partnership with UN Women, these GICC principles set standards to guide any organisation focused on making the innovation market work better for women. These include checklists for corporates to adopt a gender-responsive approach to innovation and promoting data-driven decision making.
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2018

Deliver for Good: Invest in Girls and Women to Tackle Climate Change and Conserve the Environment

This policy brief examines some useful strategies to promote the inclusion of women in climate change mitigation, adaptation, and negotiations - and ensure their voices are heard. Deliver for Good is a global campaign that incorporates a gender perspective into the SDGs.
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2018

UN Women: Gender equality and big data

This resource from UN Women demonstrates the importance of big data to advancing gender equality - from the benefits of disaggregated datasets to policy-making, to addressing the gaps in women's access to ICT, keeping in mind the need for responsible use of big data in sustainable development.
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2017

Brookings: Building a pipeline of women in climate leadership

Non-state actors should invest in creating a global pipeline of girls to women climate leaders as a short-term solution for long-term gains in climate action. Calculations suggest countries with higher rates of women in climate leadership and increased schooling for girls fare better in terms of their vulnerability to climate disasters.
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2017

Harvard Business Review: Male & Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs

Research provides new evidence as to why female entrepreneurs continue to receive less funding than their male counterparts - investors ask men about potential gains, whereas women tend to be asked on potential losses. This difference appears to have substantial funding consequences for startups.
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