Five Steps to Ensure Your Private Sector Engagement Is Gender Responsive
Private sector actors are increasingly seen as integral stakeholders in the NAP process. As governments embark on their private sector engagement efforts for the NAP process, they should take care to ensure these efforts are gender responsive.
Private Sector Engagement
Engaging businesses will be imperative to the overall success of adapting to climate change.
Enterprises can create goods and services that support adaptation, for example. Banks can provide some of the funds needed to implement adaptation programming. Businesses—big and small—are valuable sources of information; they can share first-hand knowledge of how climate change affects their communities.
As key providers of employment, data, financing, goods, and services, as well as leaders in innovation, private sector actors are increasingly seen as integral stakeholders in adaptation. As such, governments around the world are making strides to involve the private sector in their National Adaptation Plan (NAP) processes.
NAP teams embarking on their private sector engagement efforts should take the necessary steps to ensure these efforts are gender responsive.
Watch our video on how to engage the private sector in NAP processes
Click on the image to read the "Toolkit for Engaging the Private Sector in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs)"
Click on the image to read the "Toolkit for Engaging the Private Sector in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs)"
Click on the image to read the "Engaging the Private Sector in National Adaptation Planning Processes" report.
Click on the image to read the "Engaging the Private Sector in National Adaptation Planning Processes" report.
Why Should Private Sector Engagement Be Gender Responsive?
Governments are already increasingly making efforts to address gender considerations in their NAP processes, aligning their NAPs with their international commitments, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC) Gender Action Plan. A failure to adopt a gender-responsive approach to private sector engagement in the NAP process could reinforce existing gender and social inequalities and exacerbate vulnerabilities.
There are gendered differences in adaptation needs and capacities that must be recognized in all adaptation investments, as well as gender-related barriers within the private sector that restrict women’s access to the decision-making processes and financial resources needed to invest in adaptation.
Women-led and women-focused businesses—which can include anything from the female farmer selling her surplus vegetables to the microfinance institution providing targeted financial services for women—are a frequently underserved and underrepresented segment of the private sector. Reasons for this include ongoing care responsibilities, limited access to formal education, less access to financial services and other resources (e.g., land), and a lack of representation in decision-making processes. All of these may stem from prevailing gender biases and inequalities, and women who are otherwise marginalized or non-binary people may face even greater barriers.
Women-led micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, for example, often do not receive enough financial or institutional support to expand their businesses. This is exacerbated by a lack of access to training, information on markets, and capacity building on the use of technologies—all of which could influence their businesses’ adaptive capacities for the better.
Land access and ownership is another critical indicator of adaptive capacity; without ownership over land, a woman’s decision-making regarding appropriate adaptive strategies can be constrained. And though women are active participants in the private sector workforce, they continue to face barriers to owning the land that they use for their businesses. Land ownership, in turn, influences access to the financial services required to engage in adaptation. Women-owned businesses, for example, may be unable to provide collateral due to a lack of control over the land, making them ineligible for commercial loans.
Despite these disparities, women—and their businesses—can be a considerable force for change in climate change adaptation action. Evidence demonstrates that, when women are able to save and invest their incomes, they are more likely to invest in their families’ health, education, and overall well-being and resilience. Further, efforts to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality are shown to deliver co-benefits in many sectors, including food, the environment, and health.
Given these challenges, it is vital that any efforts to engage the private sector in adaptation processes should employ a gender perspective and actively seek to promote gender equality.
Five Key Steps to Gender-Responsive Private Sector Engagement
NAP teams and support services are encouraged to use the following steps as a foundation for their gender-responsive private sector engagement efforts, as applicable and appropriate.
1. Collect gender-disaggregated data
When collecting, presenting, and analyzing information about the private sector, it is important that this data be separated based on gender. Doing so will allow for easier identification of existing or potential inequalities pertaining to adaptation action or private sector engagement efforts. It will also highlight where attention should be paid and where to invest to support women-led and women-focused businesses.
3. Use inclusive communication strategies
Stakeholders will differ in how they access, process, and share information. The messaging and communication channels used to reach a large-scale hotels’ association, for example, will differ from those used to speak to smallholder farmers. NAP teams should seek to apply a gender perspective to analyzing these differences in communications: should a women-led artisanal business in the informal sector, for example, be reached in the same manner as a big bank run primarily by men? NAP teams should tailor their messaging and communication channels to reflect these differences.
5. Collaborate with relevant actors to overcome gender-related barriers in the private sector
It will be difficult to achieve gender-responsive private sector engagement in adaptation if underlying gender inequalities within the sector are not overcome. These issues are broader than the NAP process, but the NAP team can play a role in highlighting concerns and collaborating with other actors to address systemic barriers. This may involve, for example, engaging the ministry or department responsible for gender issues in private sector engagement efforts. It may also include collaborating with microfinance institutions to develop tailored products for women-led businesses and to increase equity in access to credit and insurance. Fostering partnerships with educational institutions to develop training programs for women and marginalized groups in entrepreneurship and financial literacy, with a climate risk management lens, could also prove beneficial. Such efforts can not only create the foundation for a more diverse and representative private sector but also contribute to effective action on climate change adaptation.
2. Identify champions among women-led and women-focused businesses
Women-led and women-focused businesses—both formal and informal—are often underrepresented in adaptation decision-making processes. NAP teams should work with the Chamber of Commerce, the ministry in charge of gender equity, and other partners to identify these businesses as they map domestic private sector stakeholders and promote their leaders as potential or actual champions of adaptation action. NAP teams, for example, can work with these businesses to identify specific adaptation options for their operations. They can also share good news stories about adaptation investments made by women in the private sector, encouraging others to do the same. Engaging women-led business associations or women’s professional mentoring groups could lead to a “crowding in” of other women-led and women-focused businesses, as these champions spread the word and encourage participation among their networks.
4. Strive for gender balance in stakeholder meetings, dialogues, and working groups
As much as possible, gender balance should be encouraged and tracked in any private sector consultations, dialogues, meetings, institutional arrangements, and workshops. This balance is not only important for the participants of these contexts, but also for the leaders and speakers of relevant meetings and events. Further, logistics and facilitation approaches for such processes must ensure that women, non-binary, and marginalized people are able to not only participate but also feel confident and safe in their participation. This will contribute to ensuring that a diverse set of actors is brought to the table and given a platform and safe space for their voices to be heard.
1. Collect gender-disaggregated data
When collecting, presenting, and analyzing information about the private sector, it is important that this data be separated based on gender. Doing so will allow for easier identification of existing or potential inequalities pertaining to adaptation action or private sector engagement efforts. It will also highlight where attention should be paid and where to invest to support women-led and women-focused businesses.
2. Identify champions among women-led and women-focused businesses
Women-led and women-focused businesses—both formal and informal—are often underrepresented in adaptation decision-making processes. NAP teams should work with the Chamber of Commerce, the ministry in charge of gender equity, and other partners to identify these businesses as they map domestic private sector stakeholders and promote their leaders as potential or actual champions of adaptation action. NAP teams, for example, can work with these businesses to identify specific adaptation options for their operations. They can also share good news stories about adaptation investments made by women in the private sector, encouraging others to do the same. Engaging women-led business associations or women’s professional mentoring groups could lead to a “crowding in” of other women-led and women-focused businesses, as these champions spread the word and encourage participation among their networks.
3. Use inclusive communication strategies
Stakeholders will differ in how they access, process, and share information. The messaging and communication channels used to reach a large-scale hotels’ association, for example, will differ from those used to speak to smallholder farmers. NAP teams should seek to apply a gender perspective to analyzing these differences in communications: should a women-led artisanal business in the informal sector, for example, be reached in the same manner as a big bank run primarily by men? NAP teams should tailor their messaging and communication channels to reflect these differences.
4. Strive for gender balance in stakeholder meetings, dialogues, and working groups
As much as possible, gender balance should be encouraged and tracked in any private sector consultations, dialogues, meetings, institutional arrangements, and workshops. This balance is not only important for the participants of these contexts, but also for the leaders and speakers of relevant meetings and events. Further, logistics and facilitation approaches for such processes must ensure that women, non-binary, and marginalized people are able to not only participate but also feel confident and safe in their participation. This will contribute to ensuring that a diverse set of actors is brought to the table and given a platform and safe space for their voices to be heard.
5. Collaborate with relevant actors to overcome gender-related barriers in the private sector
It will be difficult to achieve gender-responsive private sector engagement in adaptation if underlying gender inequalities within the sector are not overcome. These issues are broader than the NAP process, but the NAP team can play a role in highlighting concerns and collaborating with other actors to address systemic barriers. This may involve, for example, engaging the ministry or department responsible for gender issues in private sector engagement efforts. It may also include collaborating with microfinance institutions to develop tailored products for women-led businesses and to increase equity in access to credit and insurance. Fostering partnerships with educational institutions to develop training programs for women and marginalized groups in entrepreneurship and financial literacy, with a climate risk management lens, could also prove beneficial. Such efforts can not only create the foundation for a more diverse and representative private sector but also contribute to effective action on climate change adaptation.
Interested in learning more about this topic? Read our Toolkit for a Gender-Responsive Process to Formulate and Implement National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and our Toolkit for Engaging the Private Sector in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).
For more information, please contact the NAP Global Network at info@napglobalnetwork.org.
Any opinions stated in this blog post are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or opinions of the NAP Global Network, its funders or Network participants.
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