El Niño: How women are disproportionately affected by the meteorological phenomenon |
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced that an El Niño event is expected to develop from mid-2026, impacting global temperature and rainfall patterns. El Niño is characterised by a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific. It typically occurs every two to seven years and lasts around nine to 12 months.
El Niño is not just a meteorological anomaly. It causes severe socio-economic dislocation for the most vulnerable. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecasts a year of climate stress: extreme summer heat across most of central and northwest India between May-June 2026, followed by a “deficient” to “below normal” monsoon through September. October to December may bring increased rainfall during the northeast monsoon in southern India.
India’s climate-sensitive agricultural sector, comprising roughly less than 45% of the country’s workforce — including 80% of rural women – will be treacherously hit with snowballing socio-economic impacts. Moreover, the effects will be deeply gendered, as demonstrated in all climate events.
Despite being survivors, frontline crisis responders, and the lifeline of the rural economy, gender inequalities disproportionately reduce women’s climate adaptive capacities relative to men. As small scale subsistence farmers, small herders, natural resource managers, landless labourers, women lose much smaller asset bases – small crop yields, livestock, fodder, fishponds and catch, seeds, household supplies, microenterprise inventory, incomes, employment, and food and nutrition compared to men. This causes deeper multi-dimensional feminised poverty, and disproportionately erodes women’s resilience, compared to men.
In women-typical informal urban work sectors – weavers, garment producers, embroiderers, construction workers, head........