Climate Shocks and Female Targeted Political Violence

This paper investigates whether climate shocks exacerbate gender-based violence perpetrated by armed political actors. To causally identify these effects, we leverage geo-referenced panel data across Africa. Our outcome of interest includes direct killings, abductions, torture, and sexual violence explicitly targeting women and girls. We find that extreme temperature shocks significantly increase the incidence of female-targeted civilian conflict. However, this effect is attenuated in areas where indicators of female empowerment are higher. These findings support the view that gender-based violence under climate stress is more pronounced in contexts where women are socially and economically marginalized, suggesting that social valuation of women plays a critical role in moderating climate-induced conflict dynamics.