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An Intersectional Lens : The Gendered Impact of Climate Change on Global Labour

Maia Simpson

Labour exploitation disproportionally impacts women and girls due to deeply entrenched discriminatory norms that push them into precarious, informal, and often forced labour. These vulnerabilities are severely amplified during environmental disasters.

To understand this compounding threat, one must first look at the baseline global data on labour exploitation. Globally, an estimated 27.6 million people are trapped in forced labour, with 17.3 million exploited in the private sector and 6.3 million subjected to forced commercial sexual exploitation.[1] Underpinning this crisis is the informal economy, which accounts for nearly 60% of women’s employment worldwide. In low income countries, this figure skyrockets to around 90%.[2] This leaves the vast majority of female workers without contracts or steady wages. This economic vulnerability is further exacerbated by legal barriers; a 2023 assessment of 190 economies revealed that 69 of these economies maintain laws that explicitly restrict a woman’s freedom to work, while 43 lack any legal framework prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace.[2] Therefore, it is clear that before even considering the impacts of climate change women are at a significant disadvantage.


When environmental disasters do strike, destroying livelihoods and displacing communities, they act as risk multipliers that cause even more women and girls to become targets for human traffickers and exploitive labour agents who capitalise on their desperation. As well as this, climate change is rapidly undermining resource security, especially in economies dependent on agriculture. Consequently, because women and girls often bear the primary burden of securing essential daily resources like food, water and firewood, crises such as droughts force them to travel even further distances to find said resources. This dramatically increases their exposure to danger.

Conflict over these diminishing natural resources can breed horrific localised forms of gender-based violence and economic coercion. For example, in parts of Eastern and Southern Africa, resource scarcity has fuelled predatory practices such as ‘sex-for-fish’. This is where fishermen refuse to sell fish to women unless they engage in sexual acts.[3] This stark reality underscores the warnings of Ritu Bharadwaj, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), who emphasises: “The world cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking that’s being fuelled by climate change. Addressing these issues needs to be part and parcel of global plans to tackle climate change.”[3]

Looking ahead, long-term climate change projections highlight an urgent need for intervention. Under a worst-case climate scenario, it is estimated that an additional 158.3 million women and girls will be pushed into poverty by 2050. This surpasses the projected number of men and boys by 16 million. Additionally, climate-driven food insecurity is projected to impact 236 million more women and girls, compared to 131 million more men and boys.[2] This disproportionate impact severely erodes women’s economic autonomy, leaving them with few options for survival apart from to enter modern slavery, which is a term used to speak widely of forced labour, human trafficking, forced marriage, control and exploitation.[4]



References:

  1. International Labour Organization (2024). Data and Research on Forced Labour | International Labour Organization. [online] www.ilo.org. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/topics/forced-labour-modern-slavery-and-trafficking-persons/data-and-research-forced-labour. [17 May 2026]

  2. UN Women – Headquarters. (2022). Facts and Figures: Economic Empowerment. [online] Available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/economic-empowerment/facts-and-figures#_edn14. [17 May 2026]

  3. study, I. (2020). Environmental degradation driving gender-based violence – IUCN study. [online] IUCN. Available at: https://iucn.org/news/gender/202001/environmental-degradation-driving-gender-based-violence-iucn-study. [17 May 2026]

  4. Ogunniyi, D. (2025). Modern slavery and climate change: how extreme weather fuels forced labour and unwanted marriages. [online] Preventionweb.net. Available at: https://www.preventionweb.net/news/modern-slavery-and-climate-change-how-extreme-weather-fuels-forced-labour-and-unwanted. [17 May 2026]