Climate stressors affect more than health and infrastructure – they also change how people behave and interact. In higher heat, women around the world face higher risks of gender-based violence, harassment, and coercive control, even though these harms are rarely recognised or measured as climate-related impacts.

Baseline levels of violence against women in Europe are already high. According to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), around one in three women in the EU has experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 15, and one in two has experienced sexual harassment. A growing body of research shows that climate stress – particularly extreme heat – can act as a risk amplifier, intensifying conditions that are already associated with higher levels of violence and reduced safety. According to UN Women, every 1°C rise in global temperature is associated with a 4.7% increase in intimate partner violence. Research also suggests that heat can increase tension and conflict, even when it does not directly cause violence. 

Despite these patterns, the connection between climate stress and women’s safety is rarely acknowledged in public conversations. Violence against women is often treated as a separate social issue, while climate change is discussed mainly in terms of weather, buildings, and infrastructure. This divide makes it harder to see how climate stress affects everyday safety, freedom, and control – and why efforts to prevent violence and protect women must adapt as climate impacts grow.

When heatwaves, floods, storms, or prolonged environmental stress occur, the additional work required to cope most often falls on women. This pattern reflects long-standing gender inequalities in unpaid labour, but climate change intensifies it, adding new layers of responsibility, urgency, and strain.

Across Europe, women already perform a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work. Data shows that women spend significantly more hours each day on caregiving, housework, and organisational labour than men, regardless of employment status. According to one survey, women perform on average nearly two additional hours of unpaid labour every day.

Climate stress amplifies both unpaid and underpaid care labour. Climate change increases the amount, intensity, and complexity of unpaid care, domestic, and communal work.

Research from flood-affected regions around the world indicates that much of the domestic recovery work – including caregiving, cleaning, repair coordination and emotional support – is disproportionately carried out by women. Studies from Europe point to the same pattern. In recent years in the EU, hundreds of thousands of people have been internally displaced by wildfires, floods, and storms. In these situations, women often take on the main responsibility for sustaining household and community recovery – finding temporary housing, maintaining routines, caring for children and older relatives, and managing emotional strain during uncertain times.

The cumulative effect of these pressures is time poverty – where women have less time for rest, recovery, education, income-earning, or participation in public life because a large share of their daily hours is absorbed by unpaid or undervalued work. Over time, these added responsibilities shrink women's available time, making time poverty a hidden but deeply gendered impact of climate change within households.

These burdens are not experienced equally. Roma women, migrant women, and women from other marginalized groups may face climate stress shaped by economic precarity, discrimination, unequal care responsibilities, and poor housing conditions. They may spend more time in heat-exposed homes, carry greater responsibility for adapting households to difficult conditions, and face barriers to accessing services or decision-making spaces, further compounding the pressures on their time and wellbeing.

Despite being essential to how families and communities cope, care work is rarely recognised in climate discussions. Seeing care and invisible labour as part of the climate crisis broadens our understanding of who bears its costs – and why recognising and supporting this work is essential to building climate resilience.

Despite inequality and vulnerability, women across Europe are actively shaping responses to climate change that centre care, dignity, and collective responsibility. As recognized by the United Nations, women are not only disproportionately affected by climate impacts, but also play critical roles as leaders, organizers, and agents of change in climate action.

Climate movements have been strongly shaped by women’s leadership. Global initiatives such as Project Dandelion bring together women leaders from across sectors and generations to amplify women's voices, accelerate climate solutions, and demonstrate the transformative power of collective leadership. Women are also shaping climate responses at the local level, particularly where climate action intersects with social justice and community life. 

Artistic and cultural practices are also part of this landscape of resistance and imagination. Women artists, writers, and cultural workers use storytelling, visual art, performance, and participatory work to make climate injustice visible and emotionally real. Their work challenges narratives dominated by catastrophe or abstraction, opening space for reflection, connection, and shared possibility.

These approaches refuse to frame women only as victims or caregivers. Instead, they affirm women as political actors, organisers, and cultural producers who shape climate responses rather than simply endure their effects.

Highlighting resistance and solidarity shifts the climate narrative. Too often, women’s experiences are recognised only through vulnerability. Feminist futures call for more: climate action that redistributes power, strengthens communities, and expands democratic participation.