While global climate leaders met in Brazil last month for the 30^th annual global climate summit (COP30), Pakistani women and children continued to deal with the aftermath of the flooding that hit Pakistan this past summer.

The Buner district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a northwestern province of Pakistan, was one of the most affected regions, and months later, a fear of floods still echoes in the minds of many women. Ameena Bibi, 40, a flood survivor and mother of five, told the humanitarian agency CARE: “Just one thunderclap and the entire city of Buner was wide awake all night.” Bibi was washing clothes as waters surged into her home and rose to her chest within minutes, forcing her to seek higher ground.

Another flood survivor, Parveen, shared a similar ordeal with CARE: “In the early hours, at 2 a.m., floodwaters rushed in. I ran to the roof while my brother went back for our belongings, but they were swept away. He survived, but we lost everything, including our livestock. Now I am staying with relatives.”

Similar stories can be heard in flood-affected regions across Pakistan, where women and children are disproportionately affected by flooding.

Women Struggle to Access Necessary Aid

Pakistan ranks near the bottom of the Global Gender Index (2023), which measures progress toward gender parity across countries. Among the bottom five of the 146 countries assessed, Pakistani women face severe socio-economic inequities that limit their access to education, health, and political representation. Deeply rooted patriarchal norms limit women’s access to resources, decision-making, and drive high rates of gender-based violence.

Recent flooding has exacerbated these inequalities. Between July and September 2025, 4,700 villages were affected by flooding, leading to around 1,000 deaths and the displacement of 4.8 million people.

The physical and emotional toll is most visible in rural areas, where livelihoods are tied to agricultural and local ecosystems. In these areas, notes the World Food Programme, women and girls already face higher rates of malnutrition and hunger than their male counterparts as a result of the barriers they face in accessing government services.

Many women lost crops, livestock, and the means to feed their families. In some of the worst-affected towns of Punjab Province—Alie Pure and Jalal Pure Pirwala—women and children queued for hours to receive food aid, with pregnant, elderly, and disabled women suffering the most. The experience of days without proper meals has led to weakness, sleep deprivation, and anxiety.

Compromised Dignity and Hygiene for Women and Children

For many women, the floods meant losing everything overnight, and being compelled to take shelter in overcrowded and poorly equipped camps.

One journalist visiting a relief site in Southern Punjab reported that 3,000 women shared fewer than a dozen toilets, and received no sanitary supplies and only limited clean water. There were very few tents to house them, and they had no space to move and stretch freely.  A lack of menstrual products also left women using unsafe materials including used clothes. This “period poverty” led to high rates of urinary tract infections and other health problems.

After experiencing the dismal state of the camps, many women returned to dilapidated homes inundated by flood damage. Many of these houses were still underwater. This flight back to dismal conditions led to diarrhea, eye infections, and skin disease. And now, as winter approaches, Pakistani women remain trapped in broken homes where they are surrounded by floodwater. 

These women who struggle to survive in the wake of flooding also carry the responsibility of childrearing. Schools in these regions have been closed, or converted into relief shelters, thus halting education and widening existing learning gaps. Many children have lost parents and siblings in the catastrophe, and also suffer severe trauma and malnutrition. Girls also face high risks of dropping out of school due to displacement and damage caused by the floods. Skin and water-borne diseases are common.

A report in the newspaper Dawn titled “Monsoon Brides” examined how extreme environmental events, such as flooding and drought, fuel child marriages in Pakistan’s Sindh province. A similar report in Al Jazeera also related how the practice of child marriage is on the rise in flood-damaged areas, as men pay an agreed sum to families in exchange for marriage to girls as young as nine to thirteen years of age.

Pakistan’s past experience with floods and post-disaster relief work shows that when the government struggles to deliver aid effectively it creates an opening for extremist groups to step in, setting up relief camps and using the crisis to build support among the public.

Finding the Way Forward

While flooding isn’t new to Pakistan, the intensity of monsoon rains is increasing because of climate change. When Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives, spoke to Al Jazeera recently about the climate crisis and global apathy, he said that “Pakistan faces catastrophic climate disasters on its own.” After the 2022 disastrous floods, most of the financial assistance came in the form of loans, with virtually no international funding provided as direct aid. Iqbal added that the World Bank has said Pakistan needs more than $340 billion for climate adaptation.

Indeed, global institutions acknowledge that no country can address climate impacts alone, impactful aid remains limited. This absence of sustained, gender-sensitive support reflects a wider pattern of global neglect. Therefore, a top-to-bottom gender-sensitive climate action policy should be devised on the principles of gender inclusion, equity, and empowerment. Similarly, gender sensitive response to the health and hygiene of women should be made a top priority in the post-disaster rehabilitation process. 

Well-functioning gender-inclusive local governance must be at the center of Pakistan’s climate resilience strategy. Voices of women must be included in the climate solution policies, particularly, post-disaster response should be designed according to gender needs. Establishing and strengthening District Disaster Management Authorities (DDMAs) can enable early warning systems at the local tier, tailored adaptation measures, and grassroots-level relief and rehabilitation work. Empowering local authorities with financial autonomy to procure equipment and respond rapidly at the district level could save lives and restore dignity.

International institutions should provide technical guidance, fiscal support, and economic incentives for environmental governance reforms and green public-private partnerships. All along these lines, gender-sensitive climate adaptation and mitigation policies should be adopted by global, national, and local institutions. Pakistan and the international community must prioritize a gender-sensitive, community-based, bottom-up framework for climate adaptation and mitigation; otherwise, women and children will continue to languish in the floodwaters.