Women in climate change

The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations[1] and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau.[2] A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation."[3]

Introduction

Women have made major contributions to climate change research and policy and to broader analysis of global environmental issues.[4] They include many women scientists as well as policy makers and activists. Women researchers have made significant contributions to major scientific assessments such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and are reasonably well represented on key global change committees of the International Council for Science and US National Academy of Sciences. Women have played important leadership roles in international climate policy.

Mary Robinson

For example, Christiana Figueres leads the international climate negotiations as the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and former Irish President Mary Robinson is the UN Special Envoy on Climate Change.

Christiana Figueres

Susan Solomon chaired the climate science working group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment in 2007.

Underrepresentation of women in science

Main article: Women in STEM fields

Women are generally underrepresented in science and have faced many barriers to their success and recognition.[5][6] Following the scientific revolution in the 17th century European women became involved in observational science, including astronomy, natural history and weather observations although many universities would not admit women until the late 19th century.[7][8][9][10]

The latest report from the US National Science Foundation[11] shows that while women are now earning half of the undergraduate degrees in science and engineering, most of these are in the biosciences (especially pre-med) compared to physics, computer sciences and engineering (20%). In terms of doctorates, women are also only 20% of the engineering and physics PhDs. Although the proportion of women full professors in the US has doubled since 1993 women occupy less than 1/4 of senior faculty positions in science and engineering and women earn less than men at the same level.

It has been noted that women of color, indigenous women and women from the global south are even more likely to be overlooked, to be poorly represented in the academy and leadership.[12] This is associated with a legacy of discrimination, lack of educational opportunities, language barriers, and a lack of effort to identify and cite them.[13][14]

Women in climate change disciplines

Women are underrepresented in key disciplines for the study of climate change. For example, women are a minority in the earth sciences where surveys reveal that less than 20% of meteorologists and geoscientists are women.[15] A recent analysis of US atmospheric science doctoral programs reveals that women were 17% of tenure track and tenured faculty, with even smaller proportions at higher rank, and 53% of departments had two or fewer women faculty.[16] Women are slightly better represented in the ecological sciences. One study reports that women are 55% of graduate students in ecology but only 1/3 of tenured faculty are women and that 3/4 of the articles in the flagship international journal - Ecology - are written by men.[17] Women received proportionally less research funding and were less likely to be cited by their colleagues. Women members of the Ecological Society of America increased from 23% in 1992 to 37% in 2010.[18]

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization publishes data on women in science worldwide.[19] Overall women are better represented as a share of total scientific researchers in Latin America, Oceania and Europe (30%+) and least in Asia (19%).

Arguments for women in science and climate change

It is argued that when women are overlooked as scholars and decision makers the world fails to take advantage of its full human capacity, which is needed for issues as urgent as climate change.[20] Women may also take more collaborative approaches, especially in negotiations, and may pay more attention to disadvantaged groups and to the natural environment.[21][22]

Gender has become an issue because of women's essential roles in managing resources such as water, forests and energy and as women lead fights for environmental protection.[23][24]

A general concern has been expressed about the need to highlight the work of women and to include more women in major committees in order to provide gender balance, social justice, and inspiration to young women to enter careers in science.[25][26] This reflects more general arguments about the barriers to women's advancement and the need for women to 'Lean in' to leadership positions (e.g. Lean In).

Susan Solomon

Women and international climate policy

The outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development - the Future we Want - recognized the need to remove barriers to the full and equal participation of women in decision making and management and the need to increase women in leadership positions.[27] A report prepared by UN Women, the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice, the Global Gender and Climate Alliance and the UNFCCC recognizes the structural inequalities that impede the representation of women in climate science, negotiations and policies and recommends greater gender balance in the UNFCCC and national delegations.[28] The report argues that the 'challenges of climate change cannot be solved without empowering women' and that women have been marginalized in international negotiations. It reports data that show weak representation of women in the institutions of the UNFCCC including the Adaptation Committee (25%), the GEF Council (19%) and the Expert Group (15%) and that overall women constitute less than 20% of delegation heads and less that 30% of delegation members at UNFCCC conferences.

The Manthropocene

A call for international science to pay greater attention to the inclusion of women scholars was made by Kate Raworth in her article "Must the Anthropocene be the Manthropocene?"[29] She points out that the working group of 36 scientists who convened in 2013 to decide if humanity was entering a new epoch of the Anthropocene was composed almost entirely of men. She stated: "Leading scientists may have the intellect to recognize that our planetary era is dominated by human activity, but they still seem oblivious to the fact that their own intellectual deliberations are bizarrely dominated by white northern male voices".

Women working in climate change

There are a variety of ways to identify women who have made major contributions to climate change. The first is the list of authors of the high level international assessments for the UN and other organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The second is to examine women who have been invited to join the editorial boards of climate change refereed journals. A third is to look at the membership of the global change committees of the International Council for Science (ICSU). And a fourth is to recognize women that are members of their National Academy of Sciences who work on climate change. Many of them are IPCC or other report authors, and also members of ICSU committees, members of their National Academy and other marks of accomplishment.

Women climate researchers

Lidia Brito

Women climate change policy makers and activists

See also

References

  1. "Women, Gender Equality and Climate Change". WomenWatch. United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Retrieved June 29, 2015.
  2. Winnik Yavinsky, Rachel (December 2012). "Women More Vulnerable Than Men to Climate Change". Population Reference Bureau. Retrieved June 29, 2015.
  3. "Gender, Climate Change, and Health" (PDF). World Health Organization. Retrieved June 29, 2015.
  4. Sachs, Carolyn (2014). Women Working In The Environment: Resourceful Natures. Taylor and Francis.
  5. Rossi, AS (1962). "Women in Science: Why So Few? Social and psychological influences restrict women's choice and pursuit of careers in science". Science 148: 1196–1202. doi:10.1126/science.148.3674.1196.
  6. Eccles, Jacquelynne S (2007). Where Are All the Women? Gender Differences in Participation in Physical Science and Engineering. American Psychological Association.
  7. Herzenberg, Caroline L (1986). Women Scientists from Antiquity to the Present. Locust Hill Press. ISBN 0-933951-01-9.
  8. National Academy of Sciences (2006). Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. Washington DC: National Academies Press. ISBN 0-309-10320-7.
  9. Schiebinger, Londa (1989). he Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-57625-X.
  10. Watts, Ruth (2013). Women in Science: A social and cultural history. Routledge.
  11. National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2015). Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2015. Arlington Virginia: National Science Foundation. Retrieved April 5, 2015.
  12. Ong, Maria; Wright, C; Espinosa, LL; Orfield, G (2011). "Inside the double bind: A synthesis of empirical research on undergraduate and graduate women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics". Harvard Educational Review 81 (2): 172–209. doi:10.17763/haer.81.2.t022245n7x4752v2.
  13. National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2015). Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2015. Arlington Virginia: National Science Foundation. Retrieved April 5, 2015.
  14. Harding, Sandra (1993). The 'racial' economy of science; Toward a Democratic Future. Indiana University Press.
  15. UCAR. "Women in Meteorology: How long a minority?". UCAR communications. UCAR. Retrieved Apr 7, 2015.
  16. MacPhee, David; Canetto, Silvia Sara (2015). "Women in Academic Atmospheric Sciences". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 96: 59–67. doi:10.1175/bams-d-12-00215.1.
  17. Martin, Laura Jane (2012). "Where are the women in ecology". Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10: 177–178. doi:10.1890/12.wb.011.
  18. Beck, Christopher; Boersma, Kate; Tysor, C Susannah; Middendorf, George (2014). "Diversity at 100: women and underrepresented minorities in the ESA". Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 12: 434–436. doi:10.1890/14.WB.011.
  19. UNESCO. "Gender and Science". UNESCO. Retrieved 7 April 2015.
  20. Wyer, Mary; Barbercheck, M; Cookmeyer, D; Ozturk, H; Wayne, M (2013). Women, science, and technology: A reader in feminist science studies. Routledge.
  21. Blanchard, Eric M (2014). "Blanchard, E. M. (2014). Gender, international relations, and the development of feminist security theory". Signs 40 (1).
  22. Porter, Elisabeth (2007). Peacebuilding: Women in international perspective. Routledge.
  23. Buckingham-Hatfield, Susan (2005). Gender and Environment. Routledge.
  24. Rocheleau, Dianne; Thomas-Slayter, Barbara; Wangari, Esther (2013). Feminist political ecology: Global issues and local experience. Routledge.
  25. Buck, Holly; Gammon, Andrea R; Preston, Christopher J (2014). "Gender and Geoengineering". Hypatia 29 (3): 651–669. doi:10.1111/hypa.12083.
  26. Pearson, Willie; Frehill, Lisa; Didion, Catherine (2012). Blueprint for the Future:: Framing the Issues of Women in Science in a Global Context: Summary of a Workshop. National Academies Press.
  27. UN. "The Future we Want - Outcome document". UN. Retrieved 7 April 2015.
  28. UN Women and Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice (May 2013). The Full View: Advancing the goal of gender balance in multilateral and intergovernmental processes. UN Women.
  29. Raworth, Kate. Must the Anthropocene be the Manthropocene "Must the Anthropocene be the Manthropocene" Check |url= value (help). The Guardian. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  30. "The Carbon Brief Interview: Valérie Masson-Delmotte". Archived from the original on 2016-02-05. Retrieved 2016-02-13.
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