Last month saw the commemoration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the United Nations' annual call for women to have greater access to, and participation in, the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—or STEM.
This year's IDWGIS theme focused on gender equality and the crucial contribution that women and girls can make, not only to the economic development of the world, but also to progress across all the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
However, according to the United Nations, a significant gender gap in STEM persists. Even though women have made tremendous progress to increase their participation in higher education, we are still under-represented in STEM careers.
According to the U.N., women are typically given smaller research grants than their male colleagues. Despite a shortage of skills in many technological fields, they still account for only 28 percent of engineering graduates and 40 percent of graduates in computer science and informatics. Female researchers are underrepresented in well-known journals, overlooked for promotions, and have shorter, less well-paid careers.
As someone who has been dealing with climate change and environmental issues for the last four decades, I am proud to be a leading woman in STEM. But it has been far from easy to make progress in a male-dominated field.
My work entails working in close partnership with national governments to reverse the effects of climate change through afforestation and protected area management. With my team, I specialize in both protecting existing vegetation cover and planting new ecosystems that maintain a healthy rainfall. I manage a team of more than 220 people on the ground—all of them men—who are responsible for enforcing environmental laws, growing new vegetation cover, and stopping logging, land grabbing, and overgrazing.
I worked in many countries around the world, and each time, found that my most difficult challenge was getting corporations and governments (mostly staffed by men) to take me seriously. I often felt that my voice was not heard and my vision was not understood. I had to work much harder to accomplish what men can achieve more easily.
And yet, in parts of the world where women bear a greater responsibility for securing food and water and tending to crops, they are the ones experiencing the greatest impacts of climate change, particularly during periods of drought and erratic rainfall.
Women are central to solving the climate crisis.
As with so many global issues, we need more women at the helm. And forward-thinking countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are leading the charge. I am thrilled that we will almost certainly see more women at COP28, the U.N. Climate Change Conference, that will convene from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 this year in Dubai.
The UAE is fortunate to be blessed with talented women leading the fight against climate change—women like Razan Al Mubarak, the managing director of the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Almheiri, minister of climate change and environment, and Nawal Al-Hosany, permanent representative of the UAE to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
But we need more.
The UAE, like much of the Middle East, must reduce local temperatures and increase rainfall, bring life back to the land and stop desertification, and increase sources of fresh water. It will take patience, planning and expertise—as well as partnerships between NGOs, governments, and the private sector—to create ecosystems of multiple species of native tree plantations on a grand scale to achieve these goals.
In short, we need all the help we can get. Bringing more women to the climate change table will increase our chances of success.
Dr. Suwanna Gauntlett is the founder and CEO of Wildlife Alliance. She has dedicated her life to protecting rainforests and wildlife in some of the world's most hostile and rugged environment. Her Twitter is @dr_suwanna.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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