The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently investigated this divide in Ayeyarwady Region villages that were heavily damaged by Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and continue to be hit with severe weather.
Isabelle Louis, acting regional director and representative for UNEP Asia-Pacific, said women disproportionally lose their lives in storms and other disasters.
This is largely because of social and traditional norms that limit their ability to protect themselves and survive, Ms Louis said.
She cited the town of Labutta, where women’s responsibility for children, sick and elderly people [can] hinder their timely escape.
As such, research from the agency said women in coastal areas of Myanmar live in constant dread of another monster sea storm.
This assessment comes after the 2016 Global Climate Risk report named Myanmar as one of the countries most-affected by extreme weather events between 1995 and 2014.
The bad news continued as the UNEP also found Myanmar women were expected to be more exposed to the growing consequences of climate change in the years ahead.
Women predominate as fishers in coastal ecosystems, including mangroves, reefs, tidal flats and coastal estuaries, often gleaning and cultivating shellfish. Therefore, women have a high dependency on natural resources that are threatened by climate change, Ms Louis said.
But the UNEP’s findings showed that although women are actively engaged in these industries, their role in these sectors is still not recognised and, as a result, they are often excluded from climate change adaptation training for farmers and fishers.
In response, material from the agency recommended that Myanmar overcomes barriers that limit women’s access and their ability to borrow, invest or start a business as this could be a way for them to find alternative income sources to adapt to climate change.
The UNEP assessment echoes previous international work on the relationship between gender and environmental disasters.
A UN Women publication claims that when disasters strike, women are more likely than men to die, citing the 2004 Asian tsunami where 70 percent of the fatalities were women.
The climate change differentiation was perhaps best summed up by a negotiator at the 2015 Paris Agreement, Andrea Jacobs.
Climate change is not gender-neutral, Ms Jacobs said. [And many] women still lack knowledge about the negative impacts of climate change and how it affects the socioeconomics within the communities. There is a need for more public awareness.
The Myanmar Times, 2016