Résumé
The climate crisis deepens existing social inequalities, disproportionately affecting women and girls in low-income, subsistence-farming communities. While numerous initiatives have sought to integrate gender considerations into climate change policies, progress remains limited. This article examines climate change-related policies in Central America through a feminist institutional lens to understand why gender integration in policy design and implementation continues to lag. Using an abductive approach and qualitative analysis of policies and interviews with policy implementers, the study explores how institutional norms, values, and practices shape the (lack of) progress in gender mainstreaming. The analysis shows that institutions involved in climate policy function as inequality regimes, where gender equality is often treated as peripheral. As a result, gender integration efforts tend to produce oversimplified solutions, weak gender units, and insufficient resource allocation.