The Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard

The Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard tracks 50 indicators across six key gender dimensions – unpaid care and domestic work, women’s economic security, health, gender-based violence, participation and leadership, and gender mainstreaming. The online dashboard and fact sheet analyze 32 new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted by September 2025, providing evidence of policy gaps and examples of good practices to strengthen accountability and promote gender-responsive climate action.

Introduction

Addressing escalating climate change calls for unprecedented levels of collective action and solidarity between people and nations. In the face of this environmental crisis, diverse women, including young, rural and Indigenous women, are contributing their time, resources and experience to support
climate action and to build their own resilience, as well as that of their families, communities and nations. But to play their part in this collective effort, women
and girls need to be recognized and supported as activists, experts, policymakers and leaders.

This is particularly urgent in a context in which climate change threatens to reverse decades of progress on gender equality. Women and girls, particularly those in low- and middle-income countries, have fewer economic resources and less access to public services and infrastructure, which means that when climate disasters occur, they are less able to recover and rebuild. Effective climate action requires countries to recognize and address the impact of the climate crisis on women and girls and harness their expertise to solve it.

As leaders gather in Belém, Brazil, for the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP 30), countries’ policy responses to the climate crisis will be closely scrutinized, especially their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). These policy documents represent each country’s roadmap for climate action. Over time, more countries have recognized the importance of gender equality and women’s
leadership in making progress, but too often they have failed to adopt the comprehensive approach needed.

To assess where countries stand, UN-Women and the Kaschak Institute have developed the Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard. It provides an
evaluation of progress towards recognizing gender inequalities that are relevant to climate action, along with commitments to action that countries are making
in their NDCs, covering six gender dimensions: economic security, unpaid care and domestic work, gender-based violence, health, participation and leadership and gender mainstreaming.

This fact sheet presents the Scorecard’s analysis of the first tranche of 32 third iteration NDCs submitted as of 8 September 2025 (see Annex). The initial results reveal not only persistent gaps but also good practices worthy of replication from diverse regions. Three case studies (Cambodia, Kenya and Uruguay) featured in Section 8 show the different ways in which countries are leveraging their NDCs to advance gender-responsive climate action.

The Scorecard is a tool that aims to support global accountability efforts by climate and gender advocates from civil society, governments and the United Nations to monitor progress on gender-responsive climate commitments and to catalyse policy learning and diffusion. For those countries that have not yet submitted their NDC, the Scorecard’s framework provides concrete guidance on what a comprehensive gender-responsive approach looks like. The full dataset, including information on policy actions, can be accessed on an interactive dashboard.

The Scorecard dashboard, along with this fact sheet, will be updated with the remaining revised NDCs ahead of the 64th Sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and COP 31 in 2026.

Citation

Citation

UN-Women and Kaschak Institute. (2025). “Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard:
Advancing Accountability in Nationally Determined Contributions.” Progress of the World’s Women Fact Sheets, No. 1.
New York: UN-Women.