Why do women’s funds connect governments and philanthropists with women leading climate action at the local level? As climate change exacerbates gender inequalities and climate finance remains difficult to access for underserved groups, Mama Cash shares how women’s funds play a key role in ensuring resources reach the women on the frontline of one of the greatest challenges of our time.
The climate crisis is not gender neutral
Women and girls suffer uniquely from the devastating effects of the climate crisis. Often living in societies with entrenched gender inequalities, the impacts of climate change further undermine their basic rights and weakens the outlook for education, economic empowerment, health, food security, and stability.
In many contexts, extreme climate events such as floods and droughts lead to food insecurities, causing girls to be taken out of school early to support household affairs. Some parents feel compelled to arrange early marriages for their daughters, which often results in early pregnancy, permanently changing the course of their young lives.
In rural settings, women and girls with daily tasks carry heavier burdens, having no choice but to walk longer distances across arid terrains to fetch water or fetch firewood, which in turn leaves them more vulnerable to gender-based violence outside the home. The threat of violence also rises during climate-related migration, under strained social dynamics and volatile conditions.
In other circumstances, men may leave rural areas to search for opportunities in urban settings, leaving women to manage land and property without the legal protections or social endorsement to do so, resulting in greater responsibilities and less support.
Women are at the heart of climate solutions
As women and girls navigate the sharp realities of climate change impacts at the community level, they are perfectly positioned to develop context specific solutions and advocate for their rights on their own terms. Women, particularly in rural or Indigenous communities, have intimate knowledge of local ecosystems and insights into environmental changes. Their typical roles – often in charge of fuelling homes and gathering water and resources – mean they are uniquely positioned to devise and implement sustainable practices and lead innovative community-based solutions for conservation and adaptation.
At the country level, research shows that including women in decision-making processes catalyses transformative change. It is clear: gender-balanced representation leads to stronger environmental policymaking and women-led initiatives often integrate gender equity and community resilience by default. Despite this, the crucial perspectives of women and girls in climate-vulnerable societies remain sidelined from community, national and international lawmaking.
Where traditional funding mechanisms struggle, women’s funds thrive
Just 2.3% of overall climate finance primarily targets gender equality. The 2023 Adaptation Gap report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found that approximately 17% of adaptation funding allocated between 2017 and 2021 was targeted at the local level. The climate finance that reaches marginalised communities is even more limited: only 0.22% of climate-related official development assistance reaches women’s rights organisations and less than 1% reaches Indigenous Peoples.
Despite growing efforts to prioritise gender in the fight for climate justice, it’s clear that a rethink on funding approaches is necessary to a) move power and resources to underrepresented people, b) provide flexible and accessible finance, and c) maintain the continuity required to deliver on climate policy goals. Funding feminist movements and women-led initiatives is a significant yet underused approach. Women’s funds have the proven expertise and track record to absorb restricted funding from bilateral and philanthropic organisations and convert it into core, flexible and long-term grants for local organisations. Through deep partnerships with local entities, women’s funds strengthen capacities, fortify operations, elevate local-to-global advocacy and scale up sustainable, effective climate action.
Since Mama Cash’s first environmental justice grants in 1991, it has given nearly €14.9 million in over 330 grants to feminist environmental justice groups in at least 45 countries. In 2016, Fondo Centroamericao de Mujeres (FCAM), Both Ends, and Mama Cash established the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), a diverse network of women’s funds, environmental justice funds, NGOs, and women-led community-based organisations (CBOs). GAGGA’s pioneering funding model offers flexible multi-year grants to support women-led CBO’s driving context-specific gender-just climate action. Since 2016, GAGGA’s three alliance members have collectively channelled over €45 million to over 2,300 CBOs in 60 countries.
While some funders worry about the perceived risks of supporting non-traditional climate leaders, the far greater risk lies in overlooking the women on the frontlines of climate action—those with the clearest vision and the deepest commitment to driving transformative change.
It’s time to fund women, trust in their leadership and invest boldly in their solutions for a sustainable future.
More to come
In our next article for the F20 Climate Solutions Magazine, you will meet some of Mama Cash’s grantee partners – formidable women fearlessly leading environmental action and working to protecting their communities and our shared futures against the odds.
In the meantime, check out our latest brief on directing finance for locally led adaptation and the attributes of effective intermediaries.
Q3 2025 Climate Solutions Magazine
We encourage you to read this edition of the F20 Climate Solutions Magazine in full. The articles focus on the transformative potential that future-forward, bold policy can have.
Expand the preview below and immerse yourself in these thought-provoking articles.
Sources:
- https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/how-gender-inequality-and-climate-change-are-interconnected
- https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2022/03/explainer-why-women-need-to-be-at-the-heart-of-climate-action?utm_source=chatgpt.com
- https://climatefundsupdate.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/CFF10-2025-ENG-Gender-DIGITAL.pdf
- https://unfccc.int/news/new-report-why-climate-change-impacts-women-differently-than-men
- https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/climate_change/downloads/Women_and_Climate_Change_Factsheet.pdf
- https://www.iied.org/climate-change-gender-justice-backlash
- https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2023/11/feminist-climate-justice-a-framework-for-action
- https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2022/03/explainer-why-women-need-to-be-at-the-heart-of-climate-action