Impacts of Extreme Weather in Urban Philippines: Analyses By Gender and Implications for Climate Adaptation

Background and Purpose. Climate adaptation aims to decrease social vulnerability and increase human capacity to adapt to climate change. Increasingly, academics, policymakers, and practitioners have called for more gender-sensitive adaptation planning. A key step toward such planning is to seek perceptions from both women and men on how their household is affected, since perceived impacts may be influenced by gender and household dynamics. In the Philippines, gender-informed adaptation may be fruitful as climate change is of growing concern and because gender relations have both patriarchal and egalitarian qualities. Conducted in Baguio City, where extreme rainy and dry seasons have recently occurred and are projected to persist, this study advances knowledge at the nexus of gender, climate, and adaptation by asking: To what extent do reported impacts of extreme rainy and dry season events vary by respondent gender?

Methods. Data are from individual surveys (N=291) nested in randomly-sampled households (N=201). Respondents from the same household are married or co-habitating partners. During surveys, respondents recalled “the last rainy season that seemed rainier than usual” and described “in what ways, if any, {their} household was affected.” Respondents did the same for “the last dry season that seemed drier or longer than usual.” Open-ended responses were coded into one or more impact categories using constant comparison and simultaneous coding techniques with NVIVO 10. Data were then analyzed in SAS 9.4, using Rao-Scott chi-square with cluster methods to test for associations between reported impact and respondent gender.

Results. For extreme rainy seasons, more women than men report difficulty fulfilling household responsibilities (24.85% vs. 8.77%, p<.001), flooding at home (13.61% vs. 4.39%, p=.004), children’s difficulty getting to school (11.24% vs. 4.39%, p=.02), and higher cost of goods (7.69% vs. 2.63%, p=.03). More men than women report less income/employment (36.84% vs. 24.26%, p=.02) and difficulty getting to work (15.79% vs. 7.69%, p=.04). For extreme dry seasons, more men than women report a positive impact of more employment (14.04% vs. 6.59%, p=.04). For other dry season impacts, no statistically significant gender differences are found; several of these, however, critically affect households: water-related hardship of any kind (53.38%), higher expenses for water/other goods (9.61%), reliance on urban springs (9.25%), difficulty fulfilling household responsibilities (7.83%), and spending excessive time obtaining water (7.12%).

Conclusions and Implications. Findings highlight that purposively seeking both women’s and men’s perceptions of climate impacts can yield similarity as well as difference in response. While more women than men, for the rainy season, described impacts related to children’s or overall household well-being, more men described impacts related to their income earning potential. For the dry season, meanwhile, hardships may be challenging to the extent that the entire household is affected by or perceives these impacts in similar ways. Future research, particularly by social work scholars engaged in community-based or participatory methods, may play an important role in ensuring that different voices and perspectives are included in gender-sensitive adaptation planning, in urban Philippines and other contexts where mitigating the consequences of climate change is of increasing concern.