At COP30 in Belem last November, the international community acknowledged a critical reality: climate action cannot succeed without the full and meaningful integration of women. The recently adopted Belem Gender Action Plan (2026-2034) establishes a global mandate to strengthen gender-responsive climate policy. It calls on countries to expand women’s leadership, improve the availability of sex-disaggregated climate data and integrate gender considerations into the design and delivery of climate finance.Policy commitments alone do not shift climate outcomes unless they influence financial decisions, capital allocation and institutional incentives. For India, one of the most climate-vulnerable economies in the world, this global consensus arrives at a critical moment. The success of the country’s green transition will depend not only on financing infrastructure, but on whether climate finance systems enable women to participate as leaders, entrepreneurs, workers and end users. Aligning domestic investment strategies with the principles set out in Belem offers a pathway to a transition that is both resilient and inclusive.This urgency is clear as climate impacts already fall disproportionately on women. Studies suggest that a 1°C rise could cause women to lose 34% more income than men, while severe droughts increase risks of undernutrition by 35%, child marriage by 37% and intimate partner violence by 50%. Climate-related mortality among women is also rising faster than among men.At the same time, women are central to many climate solutions, playing key roles in managing household energy, agriculture, water systems and community adaptation. Evidence shows that when women participate in decision-making, outcomes improve, from more efficient resource use to greater adoption of clean technologies.Yet climate finance systems remain poorly aligned with these realities. Addressing this gap requires ensuring women’s leadership in policymaking, their input in financial product design and the integration of their expertise into climate technologies and delivery models.The economics of gender-responsive climate actionEvidence increasingly supports the business case for women in India’s climate finance. In India, studies of large publicly traded companies find that firms with higher representation of women on corporate boards are more likely to provide robust climate change and greenhouse gas emissions disclosures, indicating stronger climate governance and strategic attention to environmental risk.Similarly, international research links board-level gender diversity to comprehensive sustainability initiatives and stronger environmental outcomes. At the enterprise level, emerging evidence suggests that meaningful gender participation in leadership and decision-making improves corporate accountability and long-term strategic focus.These are attributes that matter in climate finance where risk management and sustained performance are critical.On the ground, evidence from clean technology adoption further reinforces this point. For example, initiatives that trained over 4,500 women to adopt solar drying technologies in rural India increased incomes while accelerating community-level uptake of these low-carbon tools.Gender gaps in India’s climate finance systemDespite this evidence, gender considerations remain unevenly integrated across India’s climate finance system. By gender integration, we mean three related dimensions: who participates in financial decision-making, who can access climate finance and whether financial products are designed to reflect women’s needs and constraints.India has made progress in expanding climate finance through instruments such as sovereign green bonds and green deposits, and climate risk disclosures. However, gender considerations remain limited. Globally, just some 2% of climate finance flows are explicitly gender-tagged, and only 5% of blended finance transactions intentionally integrate gender considerations.In India women represent just 21.7% of financial sector employees, and only 15.9% of key management personnel, while 95.6% of women-led enterprises operate informally and lack access to formal credit. At the same time, India’s average annual climate finance flows for mitigation and adaptation reached approximately $65 billion in FY2021–22. While this represents a 20% increase from previous years, it remains significantly below the estimated $170 billion required annually to meet the country’s 2030 climate and development targets.Therefore, the need to direct finance more intentionally toward women led enterprises and underserved communities is essential.Women as architects of climate resilienceEven within existing constraints, women across India are already strengthening climate outcomes when they have access to finance and institutional support. In agriculture, institutions such as Samunnati Finance have supported more than 200 women-led farmer producer organisations (FPOs) through tailored credit products and risk guarantees, while a partnership between the UNDP and The Blended Finance Company is aiming to catalyse $45 million in climate-smart agriculture financing targeted at women farmers and women-led FPOs.Women are also advancing decentralised renewable energy as last-mile distributors of solar and clean cooking technologies. Despite these contributions across sectors, women-led climate solutions remain underrepresented in formal finance, highlighting the need to strengthen gender integration in climate finance systems.A roadmap for gender-responsive climate financeConverting the Belem Gender Action Plan into measurable outcomes requires India to treat gender as a strategic variable in climate finance, not as a compliance requirement. This demands coordinated action across institutions that regulate, allocate, de-risk and deploy climate capital.Regulators can embed gender into existing disclosure and allocation frameworks rather than create parallel systems. For example, the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting framework already tracks environmental performance and limited gender data; this can be expanded to report women’s participation in climate-relevant roles and the differential impacts of climate projects on women as workers, suppliers and users.Policymakers could also allocate a defined share of sovereign green bond proceeds to gender-inclusive climate projects, such as clean energy access for women entrepreneurs or adaptation initiatives led by women’s groups.Priority Sector Lending categories could be expanded to include climate sectors while explicitly requiring lenders to track gender-related metrics in credit deployment.Further, greater coherence could be achieved by integrating climate priorities into existing schemes supporting women-owned enterprises and embedding gender inclusion within the Climate Finance Taxonomy.Banks and NBFCs have a critical role in translating policy intent into financial access, focusing on product design, target usage and delivery. Dedicated gender finance units, partnerships with women-led groups and inclusive decision-making can improve access and relevance.Development finance institutions and multilateral agencies, too, can set norms by requiring gender analysis in climate projects using the tools like Green Climate Fund templates on gender analysis and deploying concessional capital and guarantees to de-risk women-led enterprises.As India advances its Climate Finance Taxonomy, embedding gender metrics within classification and reporting systems will help create consistency and transparency across public and private climate finance flows.Private equity and venture capital investors are well placed to accelerate gender-responsive climate finance, given their influence over capital allocation and governance. Evidence from India’s investment ecosystem highlights both the opportunity and the gap. A recent UK government–commissioned study by Intellecap finds that while many private equity and venture capital funds express intent to integrate gender considerations, this intent is unevenly reflected in investment teams, decision-making and portfolio practices.The research points to clear entry points for action, including intentional sourcing of women-led enterprises, gender-aware due diligence, post-investment support and systematic tracking of gender outcomes. Herein, frameworks such as the 2X Challenge offer practical tools to track gender outcomes across portfolios.Alongside this broader evidence, a few climate-focused investors are showing what it looks like to embed gender considerations within investment practice. Peak Sustainability Ventures, one of India’s early climate venture capital firms, has formalised a gender investment commitment following its participation in IFC’s Gender-Lens Climate Investing Programme, integrating gender considerations across its investment cycle from sourcing women-led climate startups to promoting inclusive governance in portfolio companies and strengthening the ecosystem for women entrepreneurs in sectors such as water, agriculture and clean energy.Finally, green enterprises themselves play a role in institutionalising gender equity. This includes developing internal gender action plans, creating recruitment and leadership pathways for women, integrating women across value chains as technicians, operators, distributors and managers, and tracking how products and services serve women customers differently.Indian enterprises that have embedded gender considerations into clean energy and sustainable consumption models demonstrate that this approach strengthens both business viability and climate impact.The convergence of climate urgency and economic logicIndia’s climate transition will require more than expanding renewable energy or mobilising larger pools of capital. It will require rethinking how climate finance is structured and who it reaches. Women are central to this shift and although they face disproportionate climate risks, evidence shows that when women are meaningfully included in climate finance, adoption of climate solutions improves and investments become more durable.In line with the Belem Gender Action Plan, addressing the underinvestment in women must therefore be seen as a climate finance priority, requiring coordinated action across policy, financial institutions, investors and enterprises.Jaya Jain is a manager and Kaushani Chakrabarti is an associate at Intellecap Advisory.