Women and girls suffer disproportionately from the effects of the climate crisis as they are on average poorer, less educated and more dependent on agriculture. According to a United Nations report, 80% of those displaced by the climate crisis are women. Angelica Ponce from Bolivia added “the world needs to start thinking like women. If it had been made by women, violence against women and children would have ended. We want to participate in the decisions made at the international level to end the fight for climate justice."

Of the 120 or so leaders who attended the meeting a small minority were women Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon noted and called for us to ensure climate change is a feminist issue while Alok Sharma, the UK president of Cop26 said in his speech: "we know from efforts to address climate change that they are most effective when women and girls are at the core of them," and she cited the Malala Foundation's ominous reports that the events of the climate crisis will prevent 4 million girls from in developing countries to finish school in 2021 and the trend shows that at least 12.5 million girls will not finish school every year.

Per Olsson Fridh, a Swedish minister, emphasized that although women are not the polluters of this world, they are the ones who carry the effects on their shoulders. And that the only intelligent approach at the moment is the feminist one since without a gender perspective we lose valuable knowledge about the environmental transition.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi also focused on education: “If I ran the world the only thing I would do would be to invest in women's education. When women succeed, the world succeeds."

Finally, several countries such as Canada, Germany and others announced climate projects with the aim of gender equality.

What is certain is that if women and young people who are most affected by climate change are not represented in platforms like COP26, leaders will not feel the pressure to commit to climate goals.