Abstract
The objective of this article is to analyze the effect of the political empowerment of women on vulnerability to climate change in 169 countries for the period 1995–2017. The empirical evidence which is based on panel fixed effects regressions shows that (i) the political empowerment of women as well as its components (i.e., civil liberties of women, participation of women in civil society and participation of women in political debates) reduce vulnerability to climate change. (ii) The underlying effect is most pronounced in upper middle income, Latin American, small and fragile countries. (iii) Public spending on education, the effectiveness of governance and education are the real transmission channels through which vulnerability to climate change is affected by women’s political empowerment. The findings are robust to alternative estimation methods such as the Tobit, dynamic fixed effects, and generalized method of moments regressions. Policy implications are discussed, inter alia, the need for sampled countries to encourage women’s political empowerment in order to reduce risks linked to climate change.
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Notes
Accordingly, while the contemporary literature has substantially focused on the economic empowerment of women in developing countries (Asongu et al. 2020b; Morsy 2020; Asongu et al. 2021), the role externalities of women empowerment remain spares in the literature.
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S.A.A, O.O.M, and K.J.T.G equally contributed in the conception and development of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Asongu, S.A., Messono, O.O. & Guttemberg, K.T.J. Women political empowerment and vulnerability to climate change: evidence from 169 countries. Climatic Change 174, 30 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03451-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03451-7