Climate change is not only an environmental crisis. It is also deepening existing gender inequalities in care, labour, and economic participation.

As heatwaves, floods, droughts, and environmental degradation intensify, they are increasing care needs and placing growing pressure on the systems that support care provision. These pressures increase the time and labour required to secure food, water, and fuel, and to care for children, older persons, and those who are ill, injured, or displaced. Yet despite this reality, care remains largely absent from climate adaptation strategies and private sector development approaches.

This omission matters, particularly for women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which sit at the intersection of climate change, care systems, and economic resilience.

A new research report by Kore Global for the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) argues that care systems should be understood not as peripheral social services, but as essential economic and climate infrastructure.

The report examines how climate change and care system constraints are affecting women-led enterprises across low- and middle-income countries, drawing on interviews and survey data from care enterprises and workers across Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Its findings reveal a critical but often overlooked reality: climate shocks are undermining women’s enterprise resilience not only through physical and economic disruption, but also through rising unpaid care demands and weakened care systems.

Climate Change Is Expanding the Care Burden

Climate change increases care needs in multiple ways. Extreme heat, flooding, droughts, storms, disease outbreaks, and environmental degradation are increasing illness, injury, displacement, food insecurity, and water scarcity. At the same time, climate shocks can damage the infrastructure and services that support care provision, including healthcare systems, schools, childcare centres, transport networks, water systems, and energy infrastructure.

As care systems weaken, responsibility for absorbing these shocks shifts increasingly onto households, and disproportionately onto women and girls.

Globally, women already perform more than three-quarters of unpaid care work. Climate change escalates these inequalities by increasing the time and labour required to sustain households and communities.

Women in drought-affected regions often travel longer distances to collect water and fuel. Flooding and disease outbreaks increase caregiving demands for sick family members. Climate-related migration and economic disruption further intensify household responsibilities.

These rising care demands directly affect women’s economic participation and enterprise resilience. Women entrepreneurs often reduce their working hours, shift into lower-income home-based work, bring children to workplaces, or temporarily stop economic activities altogether during climate shocks. In contexts where affordable childcare, healthcare, and social protection are already limited, climate-related care pressures reduce productivity, income stability, and adaptive capacity.

The report describes this dynamic as a “climate time tax” where climate change consumes increasing amounts of women’s unpaid time and labour, constraining their participation in paid work, enterprise development, and climate adaptation itself.

Women-led MSMEs Face Intersecting Vulnerabilities

Women-led MSMEs are particularly vulnerable because they often operate with fewer financial reserves, limited access to insurance or recovery financing, and weaker access to social protection systems. Many women entrepreneurs also work in sectors highly exposed to climate variability, including agriculture, food production, care services, informal trade, domestic work, and home-based production.

The report identifies three overlapping forms of vulnerability shaping women-led MSMEs’ ability to adapt and recover:

• Physical vulnerability, linked to unsafe working environments, extreme heat exposure, flooding, and inadequate infrastructure;
• Social vulnerability, shaped by unequal care responsibilities, gender norms, and limited access to information and networks; and
• Legal and institutional vulnerability, including gaps in labour protections, maternity benefits, childcare support, land rights, and access to finance.

These vulnerabilities reinforce one another. For example, home-based workers often experience a double burden: climate change increases both their unpaid care work and the physical risks within their working environment. Women working from overcrowded or poorly ventilated homes may experience dangerous heat exposure while simultaneously caring for children or sick family members.

Research cited in the report found that 60% of surveyed home-based workers in South Asia experienced increases of more than two additional hours of unpaid care work per day due to climate-related pressures. Other studies found that many women workers lose workdays each month due to heat-related illness affecting themselves or family members.

Climate change, therefore, is not only disrupting businesses; it is reshaping the entire ecosystem of care, labour, and economic participation that sustains women-led enterprises.

Care Enterprises Are on the Frontlines of Climate Adaptation

The report also highlights the unique role of care economy enterprises including childcare providers, eldercare services, clean energy enterprises, domestic worker platforms, and water service providers.

These enterprises face a dual challenge. On one hand, climate shocks disrupt their own operations through damaged infrastructure, rising operating costs, workforce absenteeism, and supply chain breakdowns. On the other hand, climate change increases demand for the very services they provide. For example:

• Clean energy enterprises reported increased demand for clean cookstoves and solar products during extreme weather events;
• Water enterprises experienced growing reliance on safe water distribution during droughts and saltwater intrusion;
• Childcare and eldercare providers reported rising demand during floods, heatwaves, and disease outbreaks;
• Care workers experienced rising exhaustion and burnout as they balanced increased household caregiving with growing workplace demands.

In this sense, care enterprises function as frontline climate resilience actors. They help households absorb shocks, reduce unpaid care burdens, and maintain community wellbeing during periods of crisis.

Yet despite this critical role, care enterprises remain significantly under-supported within climate finance and adaptation systems.

Women-led MSMEs Are Adapting, But Mostly Alone

Despite limited support, women entrepreneurs and care enterprises are already developing adaptation strategies.

The report documents a wide range of responses, including:

• Flexible and localised work arrangements;
• Job-sharing and adjusted shift schedules;
• Diversified supply chains;
• Climate-resilient water and energy systems;
• Shared cooperative infrastructure;
• Community-based weather and climate information systems; and
• Informal support networks that help women manage care responsibilities during climate shocks.

Some enterprises have redesigned service delivery models to reduce travel during extreme heat or flooding. Others have invested in solar backup systems, flood-resistant infrastructure, or decentralised operations.

However, many of these adaptations remain reactive, small-scale, and financially precarious. Women entrepreneurs frequently rely on loans, asset sales, reduced food consumption, or informal debt to cope with climate shocks. The report warns that without sustained support, these coping mechanisms can gradually erode enterprise resilience and deepen long-term economic insecurity.

Reframing Care as Climate Infrastructure

Ultimately, there needs to be a fundamental shift in how governments, donors, investors, and private sector actors understand care. Failure to recognise and invest in care within climate-resilient private sector development policies, programmes, interventions and investments represents both a critical omission and a missed strategic opportunity. When care systems are weak or underfunded, climate impacts translate directly into reduced labour supply, lower enterprise productivity, and weakened market resilience.

Recognising care as economic and climate infrastructure means integrating it into climate adaptation planning, private sector development strategies, social protection systems, and investment frameworks. It means investing in childcare, healthcare, water, sanitation, transport, clean energy, and labour protections that enable women-led enterprises to adapt and grow. It also means supporting care economy enterprises as critical actors in local resilience and inclusive economic development.