Climate Change and Human Security Risk: Role of Female Labor Force Participation in Punjab

Abstract

Our study aims to assess the impact of climate change risk on human security of households in selected districts of Punjab, Pakistan namely, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Bahawalpur and Sialkot. We further, aim to ascertain if female labor force participation in the household leads to increase in household’s ability to withstand climate change risk to its human security. By incorporating people’s perception of climate change, the study is based on the data collected from 1000 households of the four districts of Punjab with an equal representation of rural and urban areas. The regression analysis shows climate change as a major security risk and consistently yields deteriorating effect on human security. While incorporating female labor force participation in the model, results shows a positive impact of female labor force participation on human security. Further, the interaction term between climate change risk index and female labor force participation depicts varying but insightful outcomes for human security and its constituents i.e. health, food and economic security. Our data depicts that only 328 out of 1007 households had female earners while the average proportion of female earners was about 16% in the households, which may account for the possibility of a few statistically insignificant coefficient. Though consistently positive sign of the coefficient makes a strong case for female labor force participation in enhancing human security of households via tackling climate change risk effectively. These results highlight the need for removal of barriers to female labor force participation at the household level to enable them to play their profound role in combating climate change risk and its repercussions for human security.