Gender-responsive Digital Climate Advisory Services (DCAS): Insights from literature and three cases

This technical report provides a comprehensive framework for designing and scaling gender-responsive Digital Climate Advisory Services (DCAS) that enable equitable climate action for smallholder farmers, particularly women. Drawing on global literature and case studies from Ethiopia, Malawi, and Rwanda, the report demonstrates that digital climate services are most effective when they move beyond information delivery to address the structural barriers that limit women’s access, use, and ability to act on climate advisories. It highlights the importance of co-designing services with women, adopting multimodal delivery channels, integrating advisories with complementary services such as inputs, finance, insurance, and markets, and strengthening governance, financing, and monitoring systems that prioritize inclusion and accountability. The report concludes with five practical recommendations for scaling gender-responsive DCAS, emphasizing that equitable climate resilience depends not only on reaching more users, but on empowering women and marginalized groups to make informed and actionable decisions in the face of climate change.