Hillary Clinton says absence of women in Cop28 climate talks a major worry: ‘We are swimming against the tide’

‘Leaders of a number of countries have basically sent a message out that women need to get out of the workforce and they need to be home and make more babies,’ says former Democratic presidential nominee

Hillary Clinton has said that the lack of women around the negotiating tables at Cop28 is a major concern and and that the “tide has been turned” against the voices of women being heard in recent years.

“In many of the governments that are represented here at Cop, there are no women,” the former US secretary of state told a packed audience at an event at the Dubai Expo centre. “How do we get the concerns of women to be heard? That’s what events like these are about.

“We also have to be cautious of the fact that now we are swimming against the tide, and the tide has been turned against women in many parts of the world,” she added.

Ms Clinton was speaking at an event highlighting the critical role of women’s leadership in tackling the climate crisis, and also the growing impacts of extreme heat on women and girls in vulnerable communities.

The former Democratic presidential candidate referenced “visible pushback” against women’s rights and opportunities, pointing to a recent statement from Chinese leader Xi Jinping calling on women to “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing”.

“Leaders of a number of countries have basically sent a message out that women need to get out of the workforce and they need to be home and make more babies,” Clinton said.

“We also see changes in legislation to undermine the role of women… to encourage [them] to withdraw from the economy and undermine the rights of women who are seeking equality.”

Leaders posing during a ‘family photo’ at Cop28. It makes clear that women are not adequately represented at the highest levels of global leadership (EPA)

The fact that women are not adequately represented at the highest levels of global leadership was made abundantly clear during the “family photo” at Cop28 last week which was mainly rows of men.

Secretary Clinton appeared on “Health Day” at Cop28 with Reema Nanavaty, director of the Self Employed Women’s Association (Sewa), a trade union which represents 2.5 million informal women workers across India.

They were joined on the stage by Eleni Myrivili, global chief heat officer to UN Habitat and the Arsht-Rock Foundation.

Myrivili is one of coterie of all-female “chief heat officers” around the world. The roles were created by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre, an international think tank with a goal to make 1 billion people more resilient to extreme heat by 2030.

Heat is a silent and insidious killer that claims the lives of more people than any other climate disaster and is particularly dangerous for the elderly, young children, the poor, and those with existing health conditions.

Women were deliberately selected for the heat officer roles because they are disproportionately impacted. The number of dangerously hot days is estimated to double by 2050, and the greatest burden will fall on women and girls.

Not only does extreme heat impact women’s health, but they are the backbone of the informal economy around the world – in piecework, domestic duties and care-giving for children and the elderly.

Clinton spoke about female workers in the informal sector who she met during a visit to Gujarat in February and how heat is making their work “unbearable”.

“These are women who work hard and have worked hard. Their mothers worked hard, their grandmothers worked hard and now all of a sudden they are finding it almost unbearable to get up with the sun and, and work till the sun goes down, which is what they historically have done,” Clinton said.

“So now they’re getting up at four o’clock in the morning because by 10 or 11, it’s too hot to keep working.”

Nanavaty said that there is an urgent need for more small-scale solutions like insulated water bottles and cooling roofs to make the day-to-day lives of female workers more bearable.

“There’s nothing to protect these workers. They not just lose their lives but livelihoods,” she said.

“These women workers don’t want charity, they want a life of dignity and self-respect. And they are already showing how to play a major role in climate action.”