This paper reviews how gender is framed in the literature on climate change adaptation. It shows that although intersectionality enables a more comprehensive study of gender, this perspective has not entered the field of climate change yet. Most studies reproduce the dichotomy men vs. women, often reinforcing the idea of women as ‘victims’, while little attention has been paid to power and social relations that underpin the construction of gender. The authors argue that an intersectional lens would contribute to unveil agency and emancipatory pathways by providing a better understanding of how power dynamics produce differentiated impacts, and how it shapes people’s strategies of adaptation to climate change.