Globally, no country has succeeded in creating adequate policy that attends to the gender-climate nexus. Whilst some nations like Australia have attempted to use climate policy to address some gendered concerns, or gender policy to address some climate concerns, neither are appropriate to address the range of issues across mitigation, adaptation, disaster recovery and advocacy. Additionally, of those countries internationally that have begun to address the gender-climate nexus through a single policy, like Pakistan, gaps remain. This paper draws on workshops held in 2026 in Brisbane, Australia, with academics, policy leaders, industry and community to “rewrite” Australia’s gender and climate change policies. Drawing on an extensive review of the literature, Feminist Institutionalism and Future Generations Policymaking theories, and workshopped across two days, we produce two shadow reports – one a shadow report of Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, and the other of Australia’s first national gender equality strategy, Working for Women. We present findings of the workshops and literature review, and report on the use of co-design and participatory research methods to policy creation. As such, this paper actively contributes to exploring how policy is produced, created, and contested through actively centring the margins in policymaking processes as well as seeking to understand and explain how policy got to this status regarding gender-climate nexus.
