Back to News Centring Women in Climate Action: CAWLA at Women Deliver 2026 23 April 2026 News Topics CAWLA Climate Women’s leadership is not a side issue in the climate transition. It is the condition for its success. Who is CAWLA? The Climate Alliance for Women Leaders in Asia (CAWLA) is the regional platform connecting women climate leaders, investors, civil society, and research institutes across South and Southeast Asia at the intersection of climate, care, and economic inclusion. Brief Australia’s “Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040” recognises the scale of climate‑resilient infrastructure needs in Southeast Asia and positions gender equality and women’s economic participation as central to sustainable growth in the region (DFAT, 2023). The strategy is backed by initiatives such as Investing in Women and Emerging Markets Impact Investment Fund (EMIIF), which have demonstrated how targeted capital can unlock women’s leadership and productivity across Southeast Asian markets (DFAT, 2023). Australia’s commitment extends to South Asia through the Australia-South Asia Regional Development Partnership Plan, which mainstreams gender equality, disability, and social inclusion (GEDSI) across all climate-related investments (DFAT, 2023). Yet women’s access to finance, markets, and decision-making remains constrained by climate vulnerability, unpaid care responsibilities, and structural economic barriers (GIWPS & ICIMOD, 2025; ICIMOD, 2022). CAWLA believes gender justice and climate justice are inseparable. You cannot achieve one without the other. The Australian Council for International Development has unanimously called on Australian leaders to advance gender equality at Women Deliver 2026, recognising this as a critical moment for catalytic investment in girls and women across the Asia-Pacific region (ACFID, 2025). The UN Gender Snapshot 2025 warns that, on current trends, 351 million women and girls will still be living in extreme poverty by 2030 and that SDG 5 will be missed (UN Women & UN DESA, 2025). As the world scales up climate change mitigation and adaptation, integrating gender justice is not optional. It is a prerequisite for solutions that actually work. Our ask is simple: make women leaders across South and Southeast Asia the architects of climate resilience in the region, not its afterthought. Investing in women’s leadership means investing in innovation, recognising women’s voices, and co-creating climate solutions with half the world. Ask 1: Ensure climate finance directly reaches women leaders and is designed around their realities. Rationale When climate shocks hit, women lose livelihoods first, face greater violence, and absorb heavier domestic burdens. Climate-driven displacement further reshapes women’s access to safety, livelihoods, and decision-making, compounding existing inequalities. In South Asia, women’s work is highly concentrated in climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture and informal home-based production, making them particularly exposed to climate-related losses. Women from indigenous communities hold generations of knowledge about local ecosystems and adaptation strategies, yet are routinely excluded from policy design. Without land rights, women bear the full cost of climate disruption, without the assets to recover. Yet most climate finance still flows through large intermediaries rather than directly to women-led organisations, weakening local ownership and gender accountability (UNDP, 2024). Globally, only 22% of climate-related blended finance deals are gender-responsive, based on Convergence’s Historical Deals Database (Convergence, 2024), and only a small share of climate finance in Asia-Pacific explicitly prioritises gender equality (AVPN, 2025; UNDP, 2024). Recommendations Establish a dedicated gender-responsive climate finance window within Australia’s development portfolio, specifically targeting women’s rights organisations and grassroots women climate leaders on the frontlines of the climate crisis across South and Southeast Asia. Current GEDSI mainstreaming is a step in the right direction, but not sufficient- direct, accessible, and sustained funding for women-led climate action is the missing piece. Partner with regional alliances such as CAWLA to open direct access to capital for women leaders who are already creating climate solutions but face structural barriers to finance and scale. Ensure women are meaningfully represented in decision-making, governance, and allocation roles within climate finance mechanisms, not only as recipients but as the architects of how finance is designed and distributed. Require power analysis as part of programme design and fund selection criteria, to ensure climate finance reaches those most marginalised and does not reinforce existing power imbalances. Introduce gender accountability standards across all climate investments, and crucially, fund and support women-led and smaller organisations to build the capacity to meet them. Gender analysis tools and monitoring frameworks must be simple, accessible, and resourced, so that accountability strengthens local ownership rather than excluding those with least institutional capacity. Ask 2: Invest in women’s capacity to lead the green transition. Rationale Female students in Southeast Asia’s energy and resources sectors number only one in six (DFAT, 2023). The green economy is the biggest economic shift of our lifetime, and it is being built without half the population. Gender inclusion is not only a matter of justice. Australia’s own strategy recognises it as a driver of innovation and productivity in clean energy. Women’s leadership is not a gap to fill. It is an untapped solution. We commend the Australian Government’s partnership with private entities such as New Energy Nexus and their Women in Climate programmes. However, there is more to be done. From 2024 to 2025, Wedu’s blended finance vehicle for women’s education, the Pioneer Fund, disbursed between 14-24% of education contracts in support of women studying in climate-related fields. These women require long-term support to secure and create relevant employment in the green economy across South and Southeast Asia. Power imbalance is a root cause of inequality and conflict, and it shapes who gets to lead the climate transition. Investing in women’s capacity builds their agency and power from within, enabling them to challenge the structures that have excluded them and to lead climate solutions on their own terms. This is not about adding women to existing systems. It is about transforming those systems. Capacity strengthening must also recognise and resource the knowledge systems and leadership of Indigenous women as central to that transformation. Recommendations The Australian Government must significantly increase investment in the human capital pipeline for women’s climate leadership by funding dedicated education, training, and skills development, including technical and vocational education and training (TVET), and professional pathways that enable women in South and Southeast Asia to enter, remain, and lead in the green economy. Funding must include access to education, long-term support for career transitions, job placements, entrepreneurship, and leadership development, ensuring women can secure and create opportunities within emerging green industries. Invest in power literacy as a core competency for women climate leaders, including practical tools for power analysis that women can apply in their own organisations, advocacy, and community work. Ask 3: Fund care infrastructure as core climate infrastructure. Rationale Women’s workforce participation is constrained across South and Southeast Asia because women perform the vast majority of unpaid care work, spending two to four times longer than men on unpaid tasks that leave them “time poor” and unable to engage fully in paid work (ILO, 2018; Investing in Women, 2025). Climate disruptions increase illness, displacement and time poverty, intensifying these unpaid care burdens and turning them into a structural barrier to women’s economic participation and leadership (ILO, 2024; ICIMOD, 2022). Investing in care infrastructure will remove a key barrier to women’s economic participation and leadership, enabling them to drive community resilience and participate fully in the green economy. Investing in care infrastructure, therefore, serves a dual function: it reduces a key structural barrier to women’s economic participation while strengthening community resilience to climate shocks. Recognising and financing care as core climate infrastructure is essential to ensure that climate action is both effective and inclusive. Recommendation The Australian Government must formally recognise care infrastructure, including childcare, healthcare, and aged care, as a central pillar of climate adaptation and resilience, and allocate dedicated financing to strengthen these systems across South and Southeast Asia. This means establishing dedicated care-climate financing windows within climate and development portfolios, and enabling direct access to funding for local and women-led organisations delivering community-based care solutions. Climate investments must integrate care into adaptation and social protection strategies so that climate responses do not reinforce existing gender inequalities. This means embedding care considerations into programme design and financing models, introducing mandatory care impact assessments in climate-related programmes, and integrating care into National Adaptation Plans and Nationally Determined Contributions to ensure policy alignment. References ACFID 2025, General Council Resolution: Advancing Gender Equality at Women Deliver 2026, Australian Council for International Development, Canberra. AVPN 2025, Building Resilient Futures: The Intersection of Gender and Climate Action (APAC), AVPN. Convergence. (2024). Blended finance and the gender-energy nexus: A stocktaking report. Convergence Blended Finance. DFAT 2023, Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040, Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra. DFAT 2024, Australia-South Asia (Regional) Development Partnership Plan 2024–2029, Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra. GIWPS & ICIMOD 2025, State of Gender Equality and Climate Change in South Asia and the Hindu Kush Himalaya, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and ICIMOD, Kathmandu. ICIMOD 2022, State of Gender Equality and Climate Change in South Asia, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu. ILO 2018, Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work, International Labour Organization, Geneva. ILO 2024, The Impact of Care Responsibilities on Women’s Labour Force Participation, International Labour Organization, Geneva. Investing in Women 2025, Understanding the Care Economy in Southeast Asia, Investing in Women, Sydney. UN Women & UN DESA 2025, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2025, UN Women and UN DESA, New York.