Dolores Huerta's recent accounts may help to highlight still-lacking protections against gender-based violence in farmworker and environmental advocacy spaces.
There's a whole lot going on around the world: This weekly brief from Climate, Gendered isn't intended to be exhaustive but rather your chance to spend just a few moments on a handful of items with the potential to disproportionately impact over half the global population — plus, the ideas that might make a difference.
Note: Some details in this week's coverage of gender-based violence alleged to have been committed by Cesar Chavez may be particularly upsetting for some readers.
Last week, CG covered the potential pregnancy complications and maternal health issues linked to pollution caused by burning oil reserves following American and Israeli airstrikes on fuel depots in Iran. This week, continued conflict in the Middle East came with reports of Israel bombing the South Pars gas field in Iran and Iran launching attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure across the region,nonconsensual as displaced people reported fears of having to give birth in harrowing wartime conditions.
In a Wednesday-night social media post, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to "massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars gas field." Energy and gas prices have soared amid the conflict.
On Friday, Kuwait reportedly said that an Iranian drone attack had struck its Mina Al-Ahmadi oil refinery, causing fire and smoke and exacerbating health and safety risks.
As a conflict that many have suggested has been driven at least in part by fossil fuel interests and that has been escalated over oil and gas infrastructure attacks, people displaced by war across the region are being "forced to give birth in dangerous conditions, some even by the side of the road," according to Anandita Philipose, Lebanon Representative for the U.N. Population Fund.
Relatedly, some pharmaceutical company executives responding to concerns that medical supply chains could be disrupted by war are "actively targeting unconventional routes to ensure that the delivery of products to their final destinations is uninterrupted," according to Think Global Health.
In late February, CG covered the use of solar energy as a potential solution to the fuel shortages — and gendered impacts — worsened in the wake of what has been described functionally as an oil blockade imposed by the U.S. On March 16, the island nation suffered a nationwide blackout, which lasted around 29 hours before the power grid was brought back online.
NBC News reported on March 17 that "women are giving birth in dark hospitals with no power." A humanitarian convoy set to arrive in Cuba within days aims to deliver renewable energy supplies and other essential resources.
In early January, CG covered the nonconsensually "nudified" images of mostly women and minors generated using the energy-hungry, water-intensive artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, created by Elon Musk's AI company xAI. This week, three teenagers in Tennessee — identified as Janes 1, 2, and 3 — filed a class action lawsuit against xAI, which they say enabled users to create sexualized "deepfakes" of them.
The teens' attorney, Vanessa Baehr-Jones, told National Public Radio that the plaintiffs want to make this type of AI function "not make any business sense anymore."
At the end of 2025, CG covered an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute that suggested anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have been working to leverage environmental regulations to monitor and potentially restrict abortion across the U.S. Such efforts have called for measures such as wastewater testing that appears to single out medications like mifepristone and misoprostol — two drugs that can be used to end a pregnancy — despite no evidence they have any meaningful impact on water supplies.
On March 18, U.S. Representative Mary Miller of Illinois introduced the Clean Water for All Life Act.
Politico, which described the bill as "long-shot legislation," said that, if signed into law, it would "require any doctor prescribing abortion pills to physically examine the patient first and furnish her with a medical waste 'catch kit' to dispose of the expelled fetus."
Noted labor rights and environmental advocate Dolores Huerta has been speaking out this week about her own experiences in the wake of allegations that fellow activist Cesar Chavez sexually abused multiple women and girls decades ago. Her account could be seen to highlight the potential for gender-based violence inside the desperate and commingled struggles for agricultural worker protections, environmental justice, and community survival.
Huerta, who in California in the 1960s co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers labor union along with Chavez and Gilbert Padilla, said in a multiyear investigation conducted by the New York Times and published on March 18 that Chavez assaulted her more than once, which resulted in the births of two children who were raised by other families. The Times reported allegations from others, including that Chavez abused Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, who said they were 13 and 12, respectively, at the time the abuse began.
Chavez died in 1993 at the age of 66. Huerta, who will turn 96 next month, said in a statement published on Medium the same day that the Times released its article that she kept this secret for 60 years "because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for." She reiterated the sentiment in an interview with ABC News, noting that the other women now speaking out motivated her to do the same.
The work of Huerta, Chavez, Padilla, and others to draw attention to the experiences of farm laborers, and Latino immigrants in particular, helped increase wages, improve working conditions, and build political power. Huerta's recent accounts, meanwhile, may help to highlight still-lacking protections against gender-based violence in farmworker and environmental advocacy spaces.
When agricultural workers face crop production struggles exacerbated by rising temperatures and extreme weather, the resulting economic stresses and food insecurity can disproportionately impact already marginalized women and girls. And those facing threats from immigration enforcement may feel even more hesitant to speak out about unsafe conditions due to fear of retribution.
Monica Ramirez, founder of Justice for Migrant Women, told The 19th that communities will be carefully observing how farmworker rights leaders respond to the recent allegations. "Do they take a defensive posture or question the veracity of the survivors’ accounts?" the outlet posed. "The revelations about Chavez come at a time when sexual misconduct by powerful men has been in the spotlight, all while the country grapples with a wave of immigration enforcement actions that are targeting Latinx people."
The risks of gender-based violence can increase in these contexts and in contexts where women are fighting institutional power to defeat environmental degradation. The move in the Belém Gender Action Plan, ratified in late 2025 at COP30, to commit to establishing protections for women environmental defenders may be a step in the right direction.
With respect to addressing gender-based violence, international organizations like Cord have already identified a need to address the "significant gap in legal assistance for women working in [natural resources management]." This month, Michelle Higelin, the Executive Director of ActionAid Australia, wrote in a piece for Women's Agenda that in Indonesia she recently saw women "taking steps to adapt to climate change" that included "building a network of paralegals who are intervening in cases of violence against women and children."
By having designated 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer, the Food and Agriculture Organization — a U.N. agency — is also "[calling] for collective action and increased investments to close gender gaps, strengthen women’s livelihoods, and promote their leadership across agrifood value chains" this year.
Following the New York Times report, the UFW condemned the alleged abuse and canceled all the events the organization had planned to celebrate Cesar Chavez Day at the end of March. According to the Associated Press, some statues of Chavez have been covered over and a number of "institutions and local governments overseeing sites bearing Chavez's name have already started the process of erasing it."
Meanwhile, when ABC told Huerta in their interview that some have called for such streets and schools to be renamed for her, she reportedly told the outlet that instead these locations should be renamed for the "other real heroes" of the civil rights and farmworkers rights movements
"Cesar's actions do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people," Huerta wrote in her statement. "We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever."
In late February, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would do away with requirements established as a part of the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. The regulations aimed to reduce mercury emissions in order to limit the build-up of mercury and other heavy metals in the environment, plants, and animals.
This includes fish eaten by people, including during pregnancy, when health experts strongly caution that mercury exposure should be reduced out of concern for fetal development.
Mercury is a neurotoxin, and exposure to the naturally occurring element may negatively affect the brain and nervous system development of fetuses and young children. Regulations previously set increased monitoring and reporting requirements for power plants and limited the use of a form of coal, called lignite, which contains higher levels of mercury.
In a press release last month, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said, "The Biden-Harris administration’s anti-coal regulations sought to regulate out of existence this vital sector of our energy economy." Zeldin, whose efforts have been a part of changes under the Trump administration to sustain the coal industry, went on to suggest that the previously established restrictions would have threatened the American energy supply. He also suggested that undoing them posed no health threat.
But in a recent post, Skye Wheeler, a Senior Researcher in the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, flagged the EPA's deregulation as "an important loss" and "a setback for maternal and child health." In a follow-up with CG, Wheeler characterized the heavy metal as "one of the worst toxins in the entire world."
"Pregnant people, including the fetus and small children, are incredibly vulnerable to neurological and other harms from mercury," Wheeler told CG via email.
She also noted that removing industry restrictions from coal-fired power plants "puts the burden" of managing the health concern "on the pregnant person."
"It’s important that pregnant people get advice and facts about mercury and fish, but that can’t be the end of the public health story," Wheeler said. "We need to get mercury and other heavy metal emissions down to zero or as close as we can get to."
"[Promoting] the use of clean energy sources that do not burn coal," which is "a major source of mercury," is among the recommendations of the World Health Organization to help reduce the spread of the toxin worldwide.
Asked if U.S. regulatory rollbacks could end up impacting populations elsewhere, Wheeler told CG, "Yes, air pollution doesn’t stay in the U.S." She went on to note, however, that pollution generated in other countries also posed risks, including those from mining.
Environmental news outlet Mongabay covered a 2025 report from the International Pollutants Elimination Network, for example, that showed that "Indigenous women of childbearing age from Nicaragua’s Waspam municipality have been exposed to toxic levels of mercury" associated with small-scale gold mining in the region.
Some researchers are currently investigating whether pregnancy may, to a certain degree, help people eliminate toxins like mercury from their bodies as a kind of protective mechanism. Meanwhile, the medical community still widely warns pregnant people to avoid consuming larger quantities of fish known to contain higher levels of the heavy metal.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called it a "riskier choice" to consume "fish that contain high amounts of mercury," which include shark, swordfish, and king mackerel. The Food and Drug Administration has said "it is important to limit mercury in the diets of those who are pregnant or breastfeeding and children," while noting that consuming recommended amounts of fish known to contain lower mercury levels can contribute to a healthy diet and support children's brain development.
The New York Times reported on March 16 that a draft memo obtained by the outlet indicated Trump administration officials may have proposed withholding health aid from Zambia unless the country agreed to expand access to its mineral resources.
In the draft, prepared by the U.S. State Department's Africa Bureau, conditions were laid out that, if officially raised and enforced, could result in the U.S. halting provisions of life-saving HIV aid and other health care to Zambia as soon as May.
The memo, prepared for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, outlined steps for the Zambian government to receive humanitarian aid provided it gives American businesses greater access to Zambian mines and mineral deposits. The draft also demanded that Zambia renegotiate its contract with a U.S. foreign assistance agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, in order to revise regulatory changes in the country's mining industry, according to the Times.
Zambia is Africa's second-largest producer of copper. According to Columbia University's Center for Development and Economics Policy, 80 percent of the country's export earnings and 14 percent of its gross domestic product are tied to copper alone. Zambia is also understood to have reserves of cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, and graphite. These minerals are used in green energy infrastructure, such as electric vehicle batteries, and are understood as key to the clean energy transition.
The Times' Stephanie Nolen, reporting from the capital of Lusaka, noted that the U.S. has been frustrated by what it perceives to be "China's preferential access to Zambian mines." But while some have pointed to minerals smuggling and corruption as issues, others have pointed to the legalized plundering of the country's mineral wealth by powerful multinational enterprises as the real problem.
Journalists like Kennedy Phiri from Zambia and Freddie Clayton from the U.K. have also explained that more mining could increase pollution risks, following past mining-related contamination in the country. A report from Phiri and Clayton published this week at Yale Environment 360 underscored the importance of investing in environmental protections in step with mining expansion.
According to a national HIV and AIDS prevention roadmap for 2025-2030, "Zambia continues to face a significant HIV burden ... Women are disproportionately affected, with a prevalence of 13.9 percent compared to 8 percent among men."
More than a million people in Zambia rely on aid provided through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, commonly known as PEPFAR. The treatments provided include life-sustaining antiretroviral therapies for those living with HIV and pre-exposure prophylaxis to help reduce the spread of the virus.
Zambia has received over $6.7 billion through the program. When it launched under the George W. Bush administration, approximately 90,000 deaths each year in the country could be attributed to HIV, according to the Times.
"On this reporting trip, I revisited HIV programs and medical wards in the northwest region of Zambia, where the burden of the disease is heaviest, and I could see that the programs have deteriorated in the year since the flow of assistance was interrupted," Nolen wrote in a comment on the article. "It’s hard to imagine the people I met who rely on U.S. drugs for their survival suddenly cut off."
New research indicates that exposure to extreme heat has the potential to make chest binding uncomfortable and exacerbate gender dysphoria, among other impacts on transmasculine people.
A 2025 community-led, mixed-methods pilot study in India looked at the impact of extreme heat on 63 transmasculine participants. Arnav Singh Rana and Sahil Jamal Siddiqui, both of the Transmen Collective and co-founders of NavHill Foundation, conducted the research and found, through surveys and focus group discussions, that participants living through heat waves in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh reported health impacts unique to their experiences as trans people.
As one example, "Participants consistently described chest binding during extreme heat as physically exhausting and, at times, unsafe," the researchers told CG via email.
They went on to write, "Several participants highlighted how heat intensified the restrictive nature of binding, leading to suffocation-like sensations, back and rib pain, rashes, and fatigue. Some participants described having to cut their day short, avoid public spaces, or remove their binder despite discomfort or dysphoria."
The research also suggests that extreme heat may exacerbate gender dysphoria by reducing the ability to safely use binders, prompting clothing choices that increase visibility or exposure of the body, heightening social anxiety in public spaces, and "physical discomfort reinforcing body awareness."
"Together," the researchers told CG, "these factors create a situation where environmental stress (heat) directly interacts with gender-related distress."
But they also identified potential solutions, including improved access to safe, inclusive cooling and hydration centers as well as increased awareness around safe binder usage during heat waves.
Relatedly, some trans people have exchanged advice online, such as about how taping instead of binding may be more comfortable in higher temperatures. However, such advice has also come with recommendations to follow safe taping practices to protect the skin and reminders about how gender-affirming care like taping can be expensive.
On a broader scale, because trans people's vulnerability to extreme heat may be compounded by economic marginalization and systemic inequalities already disproportionately impacting their communities, the researchers underscored the importance of structural changes. These might include protections for employment and housing — including during heat waves — improved access to gender-affirming health care, and gender-responsive climate adaptation planning.
The NavHill co-founders confirmed that they are currently finalizing the study report and expect to publish their findings later this spring.
One goal at Climate, Gendered is to bring a spotlight to the reality that proliferating pollution, increasing temperatures, rising seas, extreme weather, habitat loss, and more can uniquely and disproportionately impact girls, women, trans communities, and nonbinary people — especially those from communities of color, Indigenous people, disabled people, immigrants and displaced people, people experiencing poverty, and residents of low- and middle-income countries. We're also interested in the climate crises and concerns that can disproportionately affect men and boys.
This work cannot be done alone or in silos. We appreciate your feedback and observations. And please feel encouraged to share one way you noticed this week that climate and gender connect — and share CG with a friend.
"The climate crisis is reinforcing gender inequality and risks setting back years of progress in girls' education and protection," Keya Khandaker, Research Manager at Plan International, told CG. "It shouldn't be portrayed solely as an environmental issue."
"The climate crisis is not gender-neutral, nor is it child-neutral," Olubusayo Ruth Akinola of the African Union told CG in an exchange about a new report and how integrating climate disaster response with child marriage prevention could help end the practice.
"As an African American grandmother and mother, I am appalled that the EPA is abandoning its duty to protect everyone's public health and welfare by revoking the endangerment finding," Almeta Cooper of Moms Clean Air Force told CG.
"Immediate actions must include data collection and support for survivors, which should encompass mental health, medical, and legal services to ensure they receive justice," nonprofit leader Carine Jocelyn told CG about addressing gendered violence at the nexus of armed unrest, poverty, and climate.
