.png)
The most important reframing to emerge across all three convenings: women are not beneficiaries of climate resilience, they are the system stabilizers through which solutions are built and sustained.
From informal workers absorbing heat shocks without income replacement, to midwives maintaining care continuity during disasters, to grandmothers holding food and health systems together under compounding stress, women's labor is the load-bearing wall of communities under the pressure of climate change. This labor is unrecognized, uncompensated, and underinvested — and the Compact's central argument is that capital flows differently when this is acknowledged structurally.
"Resilience as currently used means absorption — absorbing shocks, bouncing back. The Compact is about transformation, not absorption. We want women to be resourced, not resilient. A white, wealthy man is never described as resilient."
— Nairobi Convening, May 2026
CHWS & MIDWIVES AS INFRATRUCTURE
WHAT THE CONVENINGS SURFACED
At Skoll World Forum in Oxford, Reema Nanavaty of SEWA named three women — Ashaben, Jyotsanaben, and Manguben — whose pregnancies were lost to extreme heat because no transport, no cooling, no income replacement, and no policy existed to protect them. These women’s stories are not outliers. They represent the daily lived realities of millions of informal women workers in a warming world.
At Women Deliver in Naarm (Melbourne), women in informal sectors, climate-fragile settings, and care roles are the most exposed to climate shocks and simultaneously the least recognized as climate actors. The paradox that surfaced at Women Deliver – that the people most exposed are most often the ones holding communities together – became a foundation of the strategic approach to the convening in Nairobi.
At the Project Dandelion Convening in Nairobi, the group went further, examining the local solutions in Kenya alongside global responses. The language of resilience itself was explored in depth, underscored by the fact that women should be resourced, not resilient. The framing of resiliency strips agency. What the Compact is building is not a more shock-absorbing system – it is a transformative one.
How we view and value women's role at the climate, health, & gender nexus determines what capital flows toward them and on what terms.
CHWS & MIDWIVES AS INFRATRUCTURE
The most important reframing to emerge across all three convenings: women are not beneficiaries of climate resilience, they are the system stabilizers through which solutions are built and sustained.
From informal workers absorbing heat shocks without income replacement, to midwives maintaining care continuity during disasters, to grandmothers holding food and health systems together under compounding stress, women's labor is the load-bearing wall of communities under the pressure of climate change. This labor is unrecognized, uncompensated, and underinvested — and the Compact's central argument is that capital flows differently when this is acknowledged structurally.
"Resilience as currently used means absorption — absorbing shocks, bouncing back. The Compact is about transformation, not absorption. We want women to be resourced, not resilient. A white, wealthy man is never described as resilient."
— Nairobi Convening, May 2026
WHAT THE CONVENINGS SURFACED
At Skoll World Forum in Oxford, Reema Nanavaty of SEWA named three women — Ashaben, Jyotsanaben, and Manguben — whose pregnancies were lost to extreme heat because no transport, no cooling, no income replacement, and no policy existed to protect them. These women’s stories are not outliers. They represent the daily lived realities of millions of informal women workers in a warming world.
At Women Deliver in Naarm (Melbourne), women in informal sectors, climate-fragile settings, and care roles are the most exposed to climate shocks and simultaneously the least recognized as climate actors. The paradox that surfaced at Women Deliver – that the people most exposed are most often the ones holding communities together – became a foundation of the strategic approach to the convening in Nairobi.
At the Project Dandelion Convening in Nairobi, the group went further, examining the local solutions in Kenya alongside global responses. The language of resilience itself was explored in depth, underscored by the fact that women should be resourced, not resilient. The framing of resiliency strips agency. What the Compact is building is not a more shock-absorbing system – it is a transformative one.
How we view and value women's role at the climate, health, & gender nexus determines what capital flows toward them and on what terms.
.png)
.png)