Climate Justice and Gendered Resilience: Repositioning Social Work in the Era of Environmental Crisis

Climate Justice and Gendered Resilience: Repositioning Social Work in the Era of Environmental Crisis Prof. Nimisha Gupta Climate change has emerged not only as an environmental challenge but also as a profound social justice concern that disproportionately affects women and marginalized communities. Existing scholarship documents gendered patterns of vulnerability, yet the integration of climate justice, gendered resilience, and social work practice remains conceptually fragmented, particularly in the Indian policy context. This paper addresses that gap by proposing a gender-responsive climate justice framework that repositions social work as a key actor in climate governance and sustainable development. The study adopts a qualitative conceptual and policy-analytic design, drawing on recent peer-reviewed literature, national and state climate policy documents, and selected community-based case illustrations from India. The analysis synthesizes eco-social work theory, feminist and empowerment perspectives, resilience theory, and climate justice scholarship to examine how structural inequalities, governance gaps, and community institutions interact to shape women’s adaptive capacities. Findings indicate that significant disparities persist in the gender responsiveness of State Action Plans on Climate Change, while women-led collectives and grassroots institutions function as important mechanisms of local adaptation and resilience. However, climate governance continues to be constrained by limited gender-disaggregated data, fragmented climate finance, inadequate representation of women in decision-making structures, and insufficient attention to climate-related psychosocial distress. The paper contributes an integrated six-stage conceptual framework linking structural inequality, climate vulnerability, governance gaps, social work intervention, gendered resilience, and climate justice outcomes. By positioning social work at the intersection of environmental governance and social justice, the study offers a theoretically grounded and policy-relevant agenda for advancing gender-responsive climate action in India and comparable Global South contexts.