Located on Türkiye’s Aegean coast, Izmir is a vibrant city facing growing climate challenges that disproportionately affect its most vulnerable communities, particularly women. In the neighborhoods of Pazaryeri and Imariye, home to 23,000 residents, climate change is not an abstract environmental issue – floods and heatwaves caused by climate change have disrupted homes, stretched resources, and threatened daily life. At the forefront of these challenges stand the women of the community, navigating and adapting as they always have.
Among them is Pinar Özgüç, who has long worked with women in these communities. Now part of the Climate Resilience for Communities (CRC) project, she helps bridge the gap between technical stakeholders and residents, ensuring women’s voices are included in decision-making. Women in these neighborhoods are already stepping up, organizing emergency responses, managing gardens that produce food and plants to sell, and advocating for resources.
“In Türkiye, the falling of the cemre signals the renewal of life,” says Özgüç. “Just as the land prepares for planting, communities prepare for change.” Women in Pazaryeri and Imariye know this rhythm well. They manage households and ensure their families adapt to economic instability and climate challenges. But as climate change disrupts these patterns, the women of Pazaryeri and Imariye need new solutions.
“Their daily lives revolve around caregiving, managing households, and navigating the challenges of economic instability,”says Özgüç. “They carry the accumulated wisdom of survival and adaptation, ensuring that families and communities can withstand both seasonal shifts and larger crises. But in a world where climate change is disrupting long-held patterns, new challenges are emerging; ones that collective memory alone cannot resolve.”
Özgüç highlights in simple terms how climate change disproportionately affects the most vulnerable—those who have contributed the least to it. “One day, while walking through a poor neighborhood, I saw a woman lighting a fire on her rooftop and cooking something over it, because she couldn’t afford to refill her gas cylinder. That woman may not know much about climate change, and she has likely contributed very little to it, yet she stands to lose everything if a flood reaches her home.”
Women from the district of Imariye responding to questions on their neighborhoods as part of the Climate Resilience for Communities (CRC) project.
The gendered impact of climate change
Women in Pazaryeri and Imariye shoulder the traditional caregiving responsibilities, such as looking after children, the elderly, and the sick. During heatwaves, they ensure their families stay cool; when floods hit, they manage recovery despite financial instability and limited resources.
“Women experience poverty differently than men. Issues such as housing conditions, access to food, education, hygiene, and healthcare shape their daily struggles,” says Özgüç. “Two years ago, I visited the home of a young woman with four children struggling with poverty. Because her ground-floor home flooded during heavy rainfall, dampness and mold grew to seriously affect their health. So she mixed cement to redirect the water flow, and plastered and painted her walls to prevent mold from spreading. When I asked her where she learned these skills, she simply said: ‘What else can I do? I have no choice. Someone has to do it.’”
Despite these challenges, emergency response plans and resilience strategies in Türkiye often overlook gender dynamics. Decision-making remains male-dominated, limiting women’s ability to shape policies that directly impact their lives.
At the local level, the muhtarship, Türkiye’s most grassroots political institution, remains overwhelmingly male-dominated. According to the Global Equality and Inclusion Network, only 2.4% of muhtars are women. This means that women, particularly those in marginalized communities, often lack representation in disaster preparedness and resilience planning. This also contributes to Türkiye ranking 127th out of 146 countries in the 2024 Global Gender Gap Report, reflecting deep disparities in political and economic participation.
Özgüç sees gaps in policy that must be addressed. Türkiye’s new climate law, set to reach Parliament soon, is an opportunity, but only if it considers social inequalities. “Beyond the question of whether the law sets realistic goals, we must ask: Does it include clear provisions to address the inequalities caused by social identities such as poverty, gender, age, and disability? Does it acknowledge that the majority of society will experience its impacts differently?”
Strengthening communities through inclusion
Through an analysis done under the CRC project, the reality on the ground shows that women are already playing a crucial role in resilience-building.
“Poverty affects women most, but their awareness of each other’s struggles creates solidarity,” says Özgüç. She recalls how women empower themselves through solidarity. A civil society worker started a food support program, organizing 30 families into groups of ten. Each month, one group receives aid, and past recipients help distribute it in the next cycle. “What fascinates me about this reality is how women pass down their survival experiences to one another,” says Özgüç. “Women here are not just passive recipients of help—they are also active agents of support.”
A community is only as strong as its ability to empower and include all members. Their participation ensures that resilience strategies are holistic, practical, and sustainable. The challenges of floods and heatwaves will not disappear overnight, but with women leading the way, Pazaryeri and Imariye are better prepared to face them together.
Özgüç has seen first-hand how empowering women benefits entire communities. “Resilience isn’t just about infrastructure—it’s about people, and women are at the core of that. When women are equipped with knowledge and resources, they strengthen families, neighborhoods, and ultimately the whole city. In these households and streets, actions speak louder than words.”
“When we talked to these women about the climate crisis and the disasters it causes, they shared the solutions they had already developed. They then asked: ‘What else can we do? What do we need to learn? How can we learn it?’ Because, after all, their role is to sustain life.”
This blog was written by Matteo Bizzotto, Senior Officer of Global Communications, with contributions from Nida Bilgen and Pinar Özgüç, part of the CRC project in Izmir.
