The ideas contained here will provide the conceptual framework for the forthcoming edition of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women’s (UN-Women) flagship report, Progress of the World’s Women: Gender Equality in the Age of Climate Crisis. In addition to a conceptual framework, this series includes data and policy analysis, as well as promising case studies of public action, and draws together recommendations for policy actors to accelerate the achievement of gender equality.

This paper was developed based on a diversity of feminist academic and activist perspectives, spanning a range of disciplines from economics to political ecology, sociology, social policy, political science and geography. In June and July 2023, UN-Women convened two expert consultations, bringing together a group of leading feminists to present these ideas and to hear their critical feedback. The proposals were further scrutinized in a consultation in August 2023 with youth leaders active in UN-Women’s Generation Equality Forum Action Coalition on Feminist Action for Climate Justice.24 It is hoped that all the rich insights from these meetings have been adequately reflected here and that this paper, the conceptual framework for the forthcoming Progress of the World’s Women report, will continue to generate debate and discussion around these ideas.