The Eco-Gender Gap Is Real

The gender gap in climate change is real: Women are more likely to suffer its effects and less likely to have a seat at the policy table. But the gap is not just in these areas. It also exists in who cares more — and does more — about the climate crisis. And over and over, researchers have found that women are simply liable to care more and to take more action than men.

A July NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll revealed that 59 percent of women surveyed said climate change is a significant problem, compared to 49 percent of men. Another poll, this one by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that 86 percent of women in California cited climate change as a top concern, while only a little over 75 percent of men said as much.

“Women are generally more concerned about the environment compared to men,” Nan Li, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told NPR.

Why? Why is there this eco-gender gap at all?

It could be partly because women and people of color — in fact, all disadvantaged minorities — are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The authors of a 2017 study published in the journal Climate Science write: “Some researchers note that the strongest differences are generally observed when worrying about specific environmental issues, especially localized problems with obvious health risks,” which can be tied to women’s greater social role in domestic issues.

The authors say that this gap also may be due to the different abilities of men and women to adapt to change. “Policies aimed at mitigating climate change can represent a challenge to the status quo, which in turn can prompt responses to defend and legitimize those systems (e.g., minimizing or denying climate change, its human causes, or both),” they write. “Consistent with this perspective, in one study, men were significantly more likely than women to deny the reality of environmental problems….”

Women are also more likely to believe climate change is real. And a survey of nearly 10,000 people in the G20 countries by the Women’s Forum, a think tank, found that women are more likely to have a fear that it will affect future generations, and are more likely to reduce their water usage, eat less meat, and recycle as a result.

University of California, Riverside, Professor Jade Sasser told the East Bay Times that many young women are considering climate change in their decision on whether to have children. “If I know how bad it is now, and I know that it will continue to get worse, how can I morally justify bringing a child into that?” Sasser said young women ask her.

Young men, however, don’t tend to factor in their fear of climate change in making the decision to have children.