Gender equality

What is gender equality

Gender equality is the state in which all people, regardless of their gender, have equal rights, freedoms, conditions and opportunities. It does not mean that people – for example women and men – become the same, but rather that they have equal life chances and are valued equally. This applies not only to equality of opportunity but also to equality of impact and benefits arising from economic, social, cultural and political development – as well as opportunity to shape and influence those values, norms and systems.

Sources: IUCN, WHO, IFAD

Our work

IUCN is committed to advancing a gender-responsive approach in all our work, ensuring that our programs and policies address gender-based barriers, enabling an environment that closes gender gaps and ends gender-based discrimination. IUCN’s Human Rights in Conservation Team – part of the Centre for Conservation Action – spearheads knowledge generation; policy and programme technical support at multiple levels; and capacity building to and with a wide range of partners and stakeholders – including IUCN members, offices, commissions and networks.

Mainstreaming Gender Across the IUCN Programme

IUCN's Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Policy requires gender-responsive action across the programme and project portfolio, influencing collaborations, strategies and impacts around the world. The Human Rights in Conservation Team gender experts, working in close cooperation with other diverse teams and partners, provide tailored support for gender mainstreaming, including through building and leveraging knowledge and tools; advising on partnerships; and developing and ushering methodologies and other technical support to strengthen the institutionalisation of gender equality across IUCN offices, commissions and member networks.

Knowledge Generation

IUCN has been a thought leader on gender-environment issues for decades, generating knowledge and awareness on critical linkages between gender equality and environmental outcomes. As the global environmental agenda has evolved, IUCN has been at the forefront of producing new knowledge and guidance to ensure women's empowerment and gender equality is meaningfully integrated into technical fields such as REDD+; Forest Landscape Restoration; Climate Change Action Planning, including Nationally Determined Contributions;  and ensuring progress and accountability on meeting gender commitments anchored  throughout the Sustainable Development Goals.

Gender and Climate Change

Climate change is one of the world’s most pressing and complex challenges, and it is not gender neutral.  

IUCN works extensively at the intersection of climate change and gender concerns. Because climate change and gender are both cross-cutting themes, they overlap within various sectors, including forests, water, conservation, fisheries, energy, and urban development, and across climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience efforts.

Policy and Progress

IUCN offers technical guidance in major decision-making spheres on climate change such as the UNFCCC, including to implement its Gender Action Plan. IUCN has extensive experience collaborating with State and non-state members and stakeholders to improve policy across sectors, bridge siloes and strengthen implementation frameworks that realise gender equality and climate change commitments, in tandem.

Guiding National Implementation: ccGAPs

IUCN has supported more than two dozen countries in developing national climate change gender action plans (ccGAPs), which build on a country’s national climate change policy, strategy, or plan – identifying gender gaps and gender-responsive actions across each priority sector to enhance rights-based, gender-responsive, socially inclusive climate decision-making, programming, and practice.

Partnering to advance gender in the environment

Resilient, Inclusive and Sustainable Environment (RISE) Challenge 

The Resilient, Inclusive, & Sustainable Environments (RISE) Challenge, funded by NORAD, is an integrated research, learning and action programme combining targeted grant making with structured learning, evidence generation and policy engagement to strengthen practice and close information gaps on GBV–environment linkages at local, national and international levels. The RISE Challenge aims to spur greater awareness of the intersection between environmental degradation and GBV, test new environmental programming approaches to prevent and respond to GBV, share learning on interventions and policies and elevate attention to GBV-environment and attract commitments from other organisations. RISE’s unique approach involves grant funding for innovative locally led partnerships, generating knowledge to grow the evidence base for GBV-environment solutions, facilitating practitioner networks, and influencing policy. The latest cohort of RISE Challenge winners was announced on International Women’s Day 2026.

Building river dialogue and governance

Launched in 2011, and currently in its fifth phase, the Building River Dialogue and Governance (BRIDGE) initiative aims to build water governance capacities through learning, demonstration, leadership, and consensus-building, in transboundary river basins.

Financed by the Water Diplomacy Programme of the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), IUCN, with partners, have over the past decade implemented transboundary river governance and dialogue through BRIDGE in over twenty river and lake basins worldwide.

This phase of BRIDGE (2022 – 2026) will consolidate knowledge and expertise from previous phases to mobilise key ongoing negotiation processes where IUCN acts as a dialogue broker to foster multi-scale transboundary agreements and strengthen institutions.