Women of the Drought: How Climate Change Is Reshaping Women’s Lives in Rural Mexico

Sara González Paez fondly remembers the lush green landscape of El Baje de Agua, her hometown in Chihuahua, Mexico. She remembers the fervent water in the rivers, and the farm animals like chickens, cows and horses that walked its land.

But since the intense drought of 2011 — the worst on record at the time, affecting over 85 percent of the country — that same land is still recovering. In 2020, the drought worsened to such an extent that it led the National Water Commission to declare a natural disaster in Chihuahua. Paez’s family feels that impact, even today.

“There isn't enough land to work, and everything is very expensive. [Local farmers] plant, and it turns out that in these times there is no harvest, everything dries up,” Paez lamented.

In El Baje de Agua, and the greater municipality of Guerrero, longstanding drought has threatened the fabric of a community that has largely based its economy on agriculture and livestock, and the livelihoods that hold families together. 

For much of her life, Paez has helped her parents harvest corn and beans and maintain their grocery store. But as the land became less fruitful from the drought, she decided to travel to Chihuahua City, where she found her first job as a domestic cleaner sending remittances back to the family, and their dwindling farm. 

“I didn't know what else I could do,” she said.

Every year, more and more families like Paez’s are forced to leave their hometown in search of better, farther opportunities. But these jobs are historically concentrated among men, and dwindling as the climate crisis progresses.

Along with hampering farming communities, the drought compounds Mexico’s ability to comply with the 1944 Water Treaty, an agreement that regulates how the United States and Mexico share water from the Bravo and Colorado rivers. According to this treaty, Mexico owes the United States 1.3 million acre-feet of water — which is enough to serve about 3.9 million homes for one year.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography INEGI agricultural census, over 80 percent of farmers in Mexico are men. Martha Teresa González, Coordinator of the Chihuahua Working Women's Care Center, told More To Her Story that women tend to seek out domestic cleaning jobs because it's something they usually have experience in, and it doesn't require additional training.

"They come from that culture that teaches us from a young age to take care of the house," she explained.

Even once-reliable sources of employment for farmers are disappearing: At a press conference in April, Chihuahua State Governor María Eugenia Campos warned that the state’s agricultural sector is facing a surge in unemployment, with an estimated 15,000 of the 45,000 documented day laborers expected to lose their jobs this year due to the widespread abandonment of farms. She cited a growing shortage of arable land and prolonged drought conditions as key drivers of the crisis. 

In response, the federal government has reactivated its temporary employment program for the third consecutive year, supporting 12 of the municipalities hit hardest by drought. This year authorities plan to invest more than 20 million pesos — double the amount invested in the previous two years since the program’s launch as an emergency drought relief measure.

For many families, migration to the United States was once a way out: Migrants found work in fields across the border and sent remittances that sustained communities. But tightening migration restrictions have increasingly closed this door.

Upon taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump implemented four major executive orders that crystalized his administration’s hardline stance on immigration — measures that experts say work together to effectively close the southern border to migrants, including those seeking asylum and humanitarian protection. While Chihuahua ranks 14th nationally in remittance reception, the state has started to feel the impact. In the first quarter of 2025, remittances fell by 0.2 percent compared to the same period in 2024, totaling $322 million.

In response to these pressures, a passionate movement has formed among the women of El Baje de Agua: Many of them now embark on a journey, leaving their community in search of employment opportunities in larger cities. They primarily head to Cuauhtémoc City, Ciudad Juárez, or the state capital, Chihuahua, where they find jobs as house cleaners or domestic workers. These trips, which last between one and six hours by car, cover distances ranging from 70 to 530 kilometers. 

But the price of abandoning agriculture is high in other ways: women are uprooted, absent from their homes, and separated from their children and families.

Brissa Karina Parra Ramos, 27, a house cleaner, told More to Her Story she chose the job because the pay is better than the few available in El Baje de Agua. Parra Ramos works between 40 and 50 hours a week in a house located in an affluent area. Despite the financial stability afforded by the job, Parra Ramos's reality is complex. Every weekend, she faces the painful farewell to her children, ages 7 and 8, who are left in the care of their mother while she works most of the week. This separation, although necessary to support the family, is a constant source of sadness and regret for her.

“I go every Saturday to visit them, but it's very painful to hear, 'Don't go, Mommy, stay with us,” she said.

Itza Castañeda, Director of Gender Equity and Social Inclusion at the World Resources Institute, said in an interview with More To Her Story that forced migration has other characteristics that disrupt people's lives. 

“[The women often] arrive as domestic workers in urban areas where they are vulnerable without a social circle to support them. Leaving your children, your home, your family impacts people's lives; there is a void in the family structure,” she said.

Salvador Fernando Villa Domínguez, the mayor of the municipality of Guerrero, spoke about the growing challenges facing the region due to water scarcity and environmental pressures.

“The aquifers are being depleted, the streams are dry, and the struggle for drinking water supplies continues,” Villa Domínguez said. Among the initiatives recently undertaken in the new administration of Guerrero — and supported by the Chihuahua state government — are efforts to drill and rehabilitate water wells for local communities. Additional support includes the creation of new pits and water tanks, electrical installations, and the purchase of pumps to extract water.

Villa Domínguez affirms that much of the water problem in the communities stems from the overexploitation of aquifers, due to the area's reliance on fruit-growing, agriculture, and livestock, which contributes to a significant water deficit.

For its part, the National Water Commission presented its National Water Plan last December, with an objective to protect the human right to water, ensure that residents have enough and good quality water, and educate communities on the responsible use of water as a scarce resource.

Employment opportunities far beyond El Baje de Agua have helped many women and their families survive the relentless drought. But for 35-year-old María Isabel Carrera Legarda, they meant something more: a path toward a dream she never thought possible.

Recognized and admired in her community, Carrera Legarda used the savings from years of house cleaning to put herself through law school, becoming one of the few women in her town to earn a degree.

"Working as a house cleaner gives you a roof over your head and food, but it also feels like a kind of confinement," she said. The journey was anything but easy. She paid for her studies while working long hours, far from home, often barely making ends meet.

She recalls the moment she held her first child in her arms, filled with love, but also fear. "I thought I had nothing to offer him. All I knew how to do was clean houses," she said. Today, she’s a professional, proud of the life she’s building — not just for herself and her family, but as an example for others in her community.

Still, she knows her story is rare. “Leaving is the only way many women in El Baje de Agua can move forward,” she said. “What else can you aspire to?”