Morning-after pill free at England's pharmacies, baby carriers could help fight malaria, care work is a climate 'shock absorber'

There's a whole lot going on around the world: This weekly brief from Climate, Gendered is your chance to spend a few short moments on just five items with the potential to disproportionately impact over half the global population — and the ideas that might make a difference.

NHS makes morning-after pill available for free at UK pharmacies in England (The Guardian)

The National Health Service in England has implemented a policy aimed at improving access to on-demand — or emergency — contraception.

Officials have made the morning-after pill free at almost 10,000 pharmacies across the country, reducing the need for trips to a doctor's office or clinic. With appointments often difficult to schedule or travel to, Sue Mann of the NHS called the change "a game-changer in making reproductive health care more easily accessible."

Those thinking about boosting access in the face of extreme weather events could see the policy as another model for resilient care. 

Drought and water scarcity underlying conflict in Ethiopia are shaping gender roles and impacts (Capital)

At the second stakeholder workshop of the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition initiative in October, researcher Tirsit Sahle "[challenged] the conventional view that political or ethnic factors are the main causes of conflict" in Ethiopia's Konso Zone, per Capital.

According to the outlet, the Addis Ababa University researcher highlighted how water collection in rural communities often falls to women and girls, with this time- and labor-intensive duty sometimes causing girls to miss school and enter early marriages.

"True change will not come from policies written far away but from the ground up — from the voices of women at the grassroots who must be empowered to reshape their own destinies," the researcher wrote in a LinkedIn post about her work in the region.

Care work is a 'shock absorber' for the chaos brought on by the climate crisis (Brookings Institution)

Research coming out of the Brookings Institution describes the paid and unpaid care work — such as child care, education, health care, and elder care — "predominantly provided by women and girls" as a "shock absorber" to disasters like flooding and drought. Calling for more data collection, the researchers identified investment in climate-adapted care services and infrastructure as an adaptation strategy with the potential for high effectiveness. 

UNICEF releases report reviewing climate impacts on maternal and child nutrition (United Nations Children's Fund)

A new report from the United Nations Children's Fund highlights the effects of rising global temperatures on crop yields and food systems essential to pregnant people, mothers, infants, and children.

Noted details include the risks posed to children already at risk of malnutrition, how school closures due to weather can impact childhood nutrient access, and mothers’ sacrifice of personal nutrition to support their children during periods of food insecurity.

Among the knowledge gaps identified in the UNICEF report are the evaluation of how climate impacts on post-harvest systems (such as packaging and transportation) might affect food supplies, impacts on aquaculture, and research on fragile contexts and small island states.

Baby carriers treated with permethrin could provide significant protection against malaria exposure (New York Times)

Treating infant carriers with permethrin could greatly reduce exposure to malaria, according to the results of a large, randomized clinical trial in Uganda involving hundreds of mothers and babies and published in the New England Journal of Medicine in September.

With rising global temperatures, shifting weather patterns, and the highly adaptive nature of mosquitoes exacerbating the spread of the disease, this method of prevention could help to address a gap in vaccine coverage for a population particularly vulnerable to serious complications — doses are not always available, and where they are, babies don't receive the first dose until they are five months old.

Meanwhile, any potential adverse effects of the insecticide must be fully studied.

One goal at Climate, Gendered is to help bring an undeniable spotlight to the reality that proliferating pollution, increasing temperatures, sea level rise, extreme weather, habitat loss, and more can uniquely and disproportionately impact girls, women, trans communities, and nonbinary people. We welcome with gratitude your timely observations on this topic: Please share one way you noticed this week in which climate and gender connect — and share CG with a friend.