Are adaptation strategies to climate change gender neutral? Lessons learned from paddy farmers in Northern Iran

Adopting a qualitative approach, this study performs a gender analysis of the climate change effects on rice farmers’ adaptation strategies (AS) in Mazandaran Province (northern Iran) based on the sustainable livelihood approach. For this purpose, 36 male and female heads of households in Arab Mahalla and Qajar Khel villages and 10 heads of households in Kiasar village (in Mazandaran Province) were selected and studied through theoretical and purposeful sampling methods of Corbin and Strauss. These villages have the highest number of female household heads and have been severely affected by the climate crisis in recent years. For the male-headed households (n = 23), the most important climate crisis was drought (f=16), and for the female-headed households (n = 23), drought, cold, and early off-season frost and monsoon storms were the most important (f=13). The results also indicated that in climatic crises, human (X̅=12.35) and social (X̅=13) capital from the women’s perspective and financial (X̅=12.5) and physical (X̅=13) capital from the men’s perspective had the highest vulnerability percentages whereas natural capital was equally affected from both the men’s and women’s viewpoints. One of the innovative aspects of this study is the gender analysis of the impact of climate change on the AS of sustainable livelihood framework based on a qualitative approach. This study recommends that beyond increasing the diversity of living amid climate change, deliberate climate change efforts should be directed at women and that fundamental gender discrimination such as prejudices and gender inequality should be eliminated.