Women Are Far More Climate-Friendly. So Should They Rule the World?

On the eco-gender gap and what has to change if we want to tackle it (and climate change)

Did you know that heat waves and droughts can cause trees to… scream?

As their roots try to absorb moisture out of the dry ground, they suck air bubbles instead, which then invade their delicate veins, crack them open with an audible pop and, eventually, kill them.

And although unchecked climate change means more than just big trouble for our forests, that alone should be terrifying enough. After all, trees provide the most important element for human existence and all other living things on our planet: oxygen.

But as we move towards a much hotter world — 2023 was the warmest year on record, and this one will likely be even worse — the extreme weather events that wreak havoc on our world will only become increasingly common, killing more than just huge swaths of forests.

And yet, it still doesn’t seem that many people are rushing to take much-needed action to tackle the climate crisis, does it?

The recent COP28 climate summit — hosted in Saudi Arabia, out of all places — failed to acknowledge that phasing out fossil fuels, by far the largest contributors to climate change, is a critical next step. Report after report shows that the world’s biggest corporations — who are also among the world’s top emitters — fail to meet their own targets on tackling climate change. (Needless to say, these targets aren’t even ambitious to begin with.)

And climate denialism — the belief that climate change isn’t happening — continues to flourish, especially online.

However, there’s a subset of our population that is far more likely to endorse climate actions and live sustainably: women.

It’s long been known that women and men tend to differ in their attitudes and decision-making, sometimes quite drastically.

Men, on average, are more likely to focus on themselves than on others — particularly in times of stress — and make more extreme choices, which means they act either very selfishly or very altruistically, very fair or very unfair, very risky or very risk averse, and so on. In contrast, women are more balanced and are overall more likely to take a cooperative approach to decision-making.

When it comes to climate change, there’s evidence for clear gender differences as well.

A systemic review of studies on the topic, albeit a slightly old one, found that across different countries and age groups, it’s women who are more likely than men to support climate-friendly solutions and behave more sustainably. According to a 2011 study by Gallop involving more than 6,000 Americans, women are more worried than men about health-related environmental problems.

Climate change denial is also found to be strongly correlated with the acceptance of patriarchal or hierarchical structures, which are, unsurprisingly, more commonly endorsed by men, too.

More recently, a study published in PNAS Nexus investigated whether there’s a gender difference in concern for future generations — known as intergenerational altruism. After all, what we decide to do today — and, perhaps even more importantly, what we decide not to do — about climate change will not only affect our lives but also the lives of every single person to exist in the future.

And according to the study, which examined the behaviours of 1,600 Swedish citizens, there indeed seems to be a major difference in women and men’s concerns for the well-being of future generations.

In the experimental group, participants were first asked to state how many children they have or would like to have and how they would distribute imaginary resources across their descendants in the next 250 years. They were then encouraged to reflect on the fact that if we use up all of our resources today, there will be little left for them. And lastly, they were asked if they’d support various costly climate solutions today — like higher prices of aviation, food, fuel, and clothes — but that would benefit those future generations.

Meanwhile, participants in the control group were simply asked about their attitudes toward these costly climate policies.

In line with previous findings, it’s women but also non-binary people who were significantly more likely to support costly climate change mitigation policies when asked to contemplate future generations as well as express worries about the impact of climate change on our planet.

As the researchers behind the study suggest, this could be explained by the difference in how women and men are brought up and the societal expectations women still have to comply with.

In particular when it comes to care and nurture.

To care, to nurture, to heal, to repair, to replenish and to conserve is still frequently seen as ‘feminine’ and hence expected of women and girls.

It’s then no coincidence that nature has been characterised as a woman — Mother Nature or Mother Earth — since as far back as the Greco-Roman times. It, too, cares, nurtures, and heals us through the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe in our lungs.

Perhaps this association between nature and ‘femininity’ can also explain why, for some time now, we’ve been ruthlessly dominating and controlling it for our own benefit — or rather, for the benefit of the privileged few. Because while dominance, control, aggression and even greed are glorified due to their proximity to the ‘masculine’ ideal — often referred to as hegemonic ‘masculinity’ — the other set of behaviours is looked at as inherently inferior.

And so are women and everything else considered ‘feminine.’

Including our planet.

But although some might think of this simplistic gender stereotyping as a thing of the past, it still very much exists today. And even in some of the most gender-equal countries, like Sweden, where the study I mentioned earlier was conducted.

It’s then not surprising that women are much more likely than men to care about our environment and endorse climate-friendly solutions, even if they’re costly. Why wouldn’t we? It’s drilled into us practically since birth to be other-oriented, self-sacrificing, and always taking care of everything and everyone.

And you can see this gender difference in our actions, too.

In the private sector, women-owned businesses are more likely than men-owned businesses to consider environmental sustainability in business decisions and prioritise it over business goals. They also invest more in renewable energy and less in polluting companies. Meanwhile, countries with a larger share of women in government are more prone to ratify environmental treaties and adopt policies that address climate change.

As consumers, women spend more money on environmentally friendly products and services than men and less on those that emit greenhouse gases. One study suggests that men spend a whopping 70% more money on greenhouse gas-emitting items. On average, women also recycle more (and better), litter less, and waste less.

The list goes on. However you want to look at it, and whether it’s the private sector, public sector or the domestic sphere, women more often bear the burden of advocating for and incorporating climate-friendly behaviours, a phenomenon researchers call the ‘eco-gender gap.’

Actually, some men even see green products and habits as inherently ‘unmanly’ and as threats to their masculinity. (Well, after reading about men who refused to eat quiche — the savoury French tart — because they considered it ‘unmanly,’ too, I’m not even remotely surprised by that.)

But the reality of our world is that it’s still overwhelmingly men who dominate political, economic and legal decision-making and, consequently, have the biggest say on issues like climate change and how we approach them.

Would things be different, though, if it’s women who ruled this world?

In the last decade or so, some tried to rebrand women’s pursuit of power and adherence to typically ‘masculine’ norms of behaviour in corporate and political environments as a righteous quest for equality. That’s the mantra of the ‘girl boss’ movement, kickstarted by Sheryl Sandberg’s self-help hit Lean In and the entrepreneur behind the lifestyle brand Nasty Gal, Sophia Amoruso, who also published a book by that name.

If only women emulated the behaviour of men, especially the most successful ones, the logic goes, they would quickly rise through the ranks and their success would inevitably trickle down and lift other women up, and we would all win.

Well, on the one hand, this assumes that the traits held by this world’s most powerful and wealthy men are objectively good and not dysfunctional and even downright damaging. But on the other hand, it also assumes that women, unlike men, are not susceptible to corruption, greed, or recklessness when climbing the corporate or social ladder. Are they really, though?

If tomorrow, all men in positions of power were replaced with women, all else being equal, would things change for the better?

Perhaps to some extent, and in the short or mid-term, yes.

But I don’t think it’s the ultimate solution.

It’s not people or men who are the problem. It’s the unsustainability of systems we’ve put in place in our society, like capitalism and patriarchy, that glorify the very values that are the driving forces of climate change — dominance, greed, and individualism — and devalue the ones that could help us tackle it — care, empathy, and collaboration.

What all the studies and surveys that show evidence of an eco-gender gap are telling us is that it’s not women who should do their best to emulate stereotypically ‘masculine’ traits, but it’s men who should be encouraged to adopt some of the ‘feminine’ ones. And without being penalised for doing so.

As so many studies show, gender stereotypes are mostly, if not entirely, learned, not innate, including qualities like empathy and compassion. If only boys were encouraged from an early age to be more caring of others, just like girls are, and we stopped viewing ‘femininity’ as inferior, perhaps then more men would favour policies that do put our planet first.

Besides, fighting for a sustainable, clean, and happy world shouldn’t solely be women’s responsibility. We might be the leading voices and changemakers in the climate mitigation debate today, but let’s not forget we’re also among the crisis’ biggest victims, particularly those women and girls living in the Global South.

We should all care for and nurture the home we live in and everything that comes with it — the plants and flowers, the animals, the rivers and oceans, the mountains and forests.

This shouldn’t be considered either ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ behaviour.

Just a sensible one.

One day, we might all be screaming like the trees do today about why we haven’t done more to prevent the destruction of our environment.

And why we haven’t listened to the voices that should be listened to, including those of women, indigenous people, and other marginalised groups that have been thrust to the forefront of the fight against this crisis.

But, hopefully, it’s not too late yet to do that.

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