Climate change poses a profound threat to global ecosystems and humankind. Complementing mitigation efforts, effective adaptation strategies, and actions are urgently needed in every sector and level of society (IPCC, 2023). Gender^1-equitable participation in climate decision-making processes is recognized as central to the formulation and implementation of effective climate adaptation at all scales. Such gender-equitable participation helps to ensure that the needs as well as knowledge and skills of individuals of all genders can be taken into account in order to achieve inclusive climate adaptation decision-making and implementation.

Despite this recognition and investments in building women’s climate-related capacities, progress towards gender equity in climate adaptation appears to be slow and uneven. This poor progress reflects the need for evidence-based, critical re-thinking of barriers and enablers to gender-equitable participation in climate adaptation decision-making.

To contribute to addressing this need and the gaps in knowledge, this report surfaces the current state, perceptions regarding benefits, and associated formal and informal barriers (constraints) and enablers (supporting factors) of gender-equitable participation in climate adaptation decision-making. While recognizing the non-binary nature of gender, due to limited data, the report mainly discusses barriers to women’s equitable participation in climate adaptation decision-making. It does so from the global through the national scale, followed by a deeper dive into the local scale. To identify ways forward, the report then groups the barriers and identifies entry points for interventions and levers (interventions) for each group of barriers. In recognition of the complexity and interconnections at play, the report approaches and nuances the entry points and levers through the Gender at Work Framework.

Specifically, the report highlights how each group of barriers can be addressed through different, but complementary and interconnected, entry points (consciousness and capabilities, access to resources, rules and regulations, gender and social norms) and levers, including those that build on existing enablers. Translating these insights to support action, the report then propose recommendations for policy actors, civil society organizations (CSOs), international development agencies, and donor groups in relation to three pathways that correspond to the groups of barriers: capacities; policies and governance; and gender and social norms.