How women-headed homes bear the hidden costs of the climate crisis
New research reveals a systemic and invisible injustice: women and low-income families across the Global South are paying the real costs of the climate crisis; not governments, and not the corporations most responsible for emissions.
Hivos and local partners in Brazil and Zambia conducted mixed-methods research with 236 households to better understand how climate change is reshaping daily life, budgets, emotional wellbeing, and survival strategies. The findings expose a profound economic and gendered reality: climate impacts are landing directly inside homes, and women are absorbing the costs through unpaid care, rising expenses, lost income and recurrent debt.
This is the “hidden climate bill”: an uncounted subsidy being paid from women’s bodies, time, and unpaid labor.
