Empowering Women through Local Climate Initiatives: Lessons from Asia and the Pacific

CALL FOR PAPERS

Empowering Women through Local Climate Initiatives: Lessons from Asia and the Pacific

Journal: Women's Studies International Forum

Publisher: Elsevier

Full Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1 November 2026

Introduction

Across the globe, communities are increasingly exposed to climate disasters and extreme weather. However, the risks and losses are disproportionately borne by populations situated in climate hotspots and at the margins of society. Many communities in Asia and the Pacific region are among the most vulnerable to escalating climate adversities.

Within these communities, women are often presumed to be the worst affected — yet their voices and experiences are routinely overlooked in climate decision-making processes, resulting in interventions that are often misaligned with local realities and ineffective in addressing their needs and constraints.

A growing body of scholarship has examined the gendered impacts of climate change — highlighting both the vulnerabilities of women and girls and the strengths and capabilities of local women in responding to climate challenges. These accounts challenge essentialist narratives about women in the Global South and critique top-down climate interventions often led by external, Western actors.

Scope & Significance

This Special Issue invites contributions that explore the psychological, economic, social, and political dimensions of women's empowerment through local climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. It welcomes single case studies and comparative analyses of context-specific climate actions in Asia and the Pacific that demonstrate meaningful contributions to women's empowerment at personal, household, community, and societal levels.

Analyses may conceptualise women's empowerment either narrowly — aligned with country-specific policy and development narratives — or more broadly, drawing on feminist perspectives that view empowerment as a transformative process through which those denied the ability to make life choices gain such agency to expand their own possibilities and influence positive social change.

The Special Issue Particularly Welcomes Contributions That:

• Employ intersectional, feminist, or decolonial approaches

• Use participatory or community-based methodologies that foreground local women's voices

• Reflect critically on the challenges of measuring empowerment in diverse cultural and political contexts

• Offer policy-relevant insights for gender-responsive and locally grounded climate action

List of Topic Areas

Manuscripts are invited on themes including, but not limited to:

1. Women's empowerment through climate adaptation and mitigation initiatives in Asia and the Pacific

2. Psychological dimensions of women's empowerment in climate action contexts

3. Economic empowerment of women through local climate initiatives — livelihoods, finance, and income

4. Social empowerment — community leadership, social capital, and collective agency

5. Political empowerment — women's participation in climate governance and decision-making

6. Intersectional analyses — race, class, caste, ethnicity, age, and disability in climate vulnerability and empowerment

7. Feminist and decolonial approaches to climate adaptation and gender justice

8. Participatory and community-based methodologies in climate and gender research

9. Locally led adaptation — women's leadership in grassroots climate initiatives

10. Climate mitigation and gender — women's roles in low-carbon transitions

11. Loss and damage — gendered experiences and responses

12. Measuring women's empowerment in diverse cultural and environmental contexts

13. Critical assessments of top-down climate interventions and their gender implications

14. Gender-transformative approaches to climate change adaptation

15. Policy implications for gender-responsive and locally grounded climate action

Guest Editors

Dr. Soma Dey Associate Professor, Department of Women & Gender Studies, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh Honorary Associate Professor, School of the Environment, University of Queensland, Australia Email: soma.dey@du.ac.bd / soma.dey@uq.edu.au

Prof. Karen McNamara School of the Environment, University of Queensland, Australia Email: karen.mcnamara@uq.edu.au

Key Deadlines

Full Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1 November 2026

Submission Guidelines

Submit full manuscripts via the Women's Studies International Forum online submission portal:

https://www.editorialmanager.com/wsif/default2.aspx

The Special Issue welcomes theoretically informed qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research. Manuscripts should engage substantively with relevant literature and empirical data.

All submissions must be original and must not be under review elsewhere at the time of submission.

For author guidelines, visit the official Women's Studies International Forum page on the Elsevier ScienceDirect website.

About the Journal

Women's Studies International Forum, published by Elsevier, is a peer-reviewed journal with a CiteScore of 2.7 and Impact Factor of 1.9. It supports open access publishing and is dedicated to advancing feminist scholarship and research on women and gender — providing an international platform for interdisciplinary contributions exploring gender, power, social justice, and the lived experiences of women across diverse cultural, political, and environmental contexts worldwide.

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