Gender issues within climate change research: a bibliometric analysis

ABSTRACT

The last decades are recognized as a period when a gender-sensitive perspective being broadly acknowledged by the majority of actors involved in the field of climate change. Existing gender inequalities exacerbated by climate change urge the inclusion of a differentiated female-male approach into research, decision-making processes, adaptation, and mitigation. This paper quantitatively reviews scientific contributions in the gender subfield within climate change research published between 1996-2020 by adapting a bibliometric analysis approach. The literature was extracted from Web of Science, Google Scholar, and World Bank's repositories. The results of the co-occurrence, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, and co-authorship analyses were mapped by using the VOS viewer software. The selection criteria were developed to maximize the thematic coverage of the publications that could be referred to the gender subfield within climate change research. The findings help better understand the overall developments in the gender subfield in terms of discussed topics, authors and institutional collaborations, contributions of international organizations in the capacity of authors, and an amount of grey literature. The review might represent an interest for further studies in consideration of new research topics, geographical focus, compositions of co-authors teams, and be communicated in debates on gender within the climate change context.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender subfield
• Bibliometric analysis
• gender within climate change
• gender research
• grey literature contribution

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Marina Kovaleva

Marina Kovaleva is a PhD candidate at the Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management”, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany. Her research work is focused on the gender dimension in the climate change research.

Walter Leal Filho

Professor Dr. Walter Leal Filho is a Head of the Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management” at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany and holds the Chair of Environment and Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He has over 400 publications authored/edited books, book chapters, papers published in refereed journals. He is a Lead Author at AR6's Working Group II (Climate Change Adaptation) at the IPCC, founding editor of the International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, and heads the International Climate Change Information and Research Programme. He serves on the editorial board of various journals.

Christian Borgemeister

Professor Dr. Christian Borgemeister is a Director of the Part of the Center for Development Research (ZEF)'s triple directorate and responsible for the Department C Ecology and Natural Resources Management, the University of Bonn, Germany. His research focuses on biological control and integrated pest management (IPM) in the tropics for improved food security, and vector control of infectious diseases like malaria as part of a One Health approach. He has authored and co-authored > 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals, co-edited a book on the history of biological control in Africa, and contributed chapters to several scientific books. He is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, the Royal Entomological Society, the Entomological Society of America, and a member of several national and international academic organisations.