How ‘Traditional’ Masculinity Norms Drive the Climate Crisis
Rigid ideas of gender impact our world in more ways than we might realise
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The electric car, invented in the late 19th century, was initially branded as a vehicle for ‘the aged and infirm’ and for… women.
Although it was a woman, the German Bertha Benz, who took the first-ever long-distance car trip and whose contributions were pivotal to the development of the first engine-powered vehicle (and she was hardly the only female automotive inventor), women were deemed physically and intellectually ‘unfit’ to drive them. An electric vehicle, however, was apparently ‘feminine’ enough.
Still, despite being technologically superior — safer, easier to drive and producing fewer emissions (though that wasn’t known at the time) — electric cars, along with electric fire engines, taxis, and buses, failed to gain traction. And while other factors played a role, their lack of appeal to men, who were the primary decision-makers in family car purchases, likely contributed to their downfall, too. As one 1916 article from an American magazine on the electric car’s association with femininity noted:
The thing that is effeminate, or that has that reputation, does not find favor with the American man. Whether or not he is ‘red-blooded’ and ‘virile’ in the ordinary physical sense, at least his ideals are. The fact that anything, from a car to a color, is the delight of the ladies is enough to change his interest to a mere amused tolerance.
Rigid gender norms, which frame anything ‘feminine’ as inherently inferior and ‘masculine’ as superior, have shaped much of the world around us, from the technological innovations we decided to prioritise to the way we built our societies and organised our lives.
Yet, we so rarely look at our society, especially at some of the biggest issues tearing it apart, like climate change, through the lens of gender.
We definitely should, though.
Driving is still perceived as predominantly a male activity, with petrol-powered vehicles embodying many traits we associate with ‘traditional’ masculinity — self-reliance, individualism, competence, and dominance. This is particularly evident in advertising. Car ads — especially for heavy-duty or luxury sports models — often explicitly target men, promising to help them ‘present a tough image’ to the outside world or ‘restore their manhood’ as one Hummer pickup ad claimed.
As a result, a gender gap persists in car purchases, average annual mileage, fuel consumption, etc., across many countries — including the Nordics, the most gender-equal region in our world. Men are also less likely to walk or use public transport compared to women.
But linking driving and cars — especially those that are large and hence require more fuel — to ideals of masculinity also means that men, on average, produce significantly more carbon emissions and, consequently, contribute more to the acceleration of climate change. (Not to mention that privately owned petrol-powered cars are a major source of several other issues, including worsening air quality, traffic congestion, and the degradation of urban infrastructure.)
However, men’s higher carbon footprint is not just due to their reliance on cars. One recent study published in the Journal for Industrial Ecology examined the consumption habits and expenditures of single men and women living in Sweden and found that men are responsible for 16% more emissions than women despite spending only 2% more on goods overall. This disparity is largely due to higher car usage, yes, but also to meat consumption.
Joshua Specht, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame, suggests that the association of meat with masculine identities has deep historical roots:
Men being associated with actually doing the hunting, that connects us to our meat and meat consumption in a kind of primal way.
Well, modern studies do show that hunting wasn’t solely the domain of men, nor did early humans subsist exclusively on meat, but clearly, gender myths like ‘Man the Hunter’ die hard. Besides, and just as it’s in the case of cars, the idea that to be a ‘real man’ is to stuff yourself with bloody steaks and hefty burgers is reinforced by advertisements — such as Burger King’s ‘I’m a man’ — but increasingly also social media.
Right-leaning ‘alternative’ influencers like Joe Rogan, Led Fridman, and Jordan Peterson have recently found quite a lucrative niche in promoting the carnivore diet, framing it as a supposed return to an ‘ancestral way of living’ and arguing that it’s particularly men who should consume large quantities of meat — mostly beef — to ‘live up to their potential.’ But this narrative also frequently comes with misinformation about plant-based foods like soy as well as shaming of men who choose to eat them. ‘Soy boy’ has even become a popular online slur denoting weak, ‘emasculated’ men.
Unsurprisingly, according to food and sustainability researcher Amelia Willits-Smith, the number one predictor of high-emission diets is ‘being male’ and ‘there’s nothing that comes close.’ In fact, men consume significantly more meat than women in nearly every country on the planet, with the exceptions of India, China, and Indonesia. Men are also much less open to becoming vegetarian than women.
And just like car use, the demand for and consumption of animal products — especially beef — is a key driver of climate change, with some estimates suggesting it contributes between 15 to 19.6% of global emissions.
Clearly, it would be foolish to ignore the gendered messaging and societal pressures that push men toward such damaging consumption patterns.
So why do we?
According to research by developmental psychologist Carol Martin, when children are asked to classify aliens with triangular heads as either male or female, they overwhelmingly label them as male.
Gender socialisation — the process through which children learn gender-related rules — doesn’t just associate certain behaviours with femininity or masculinity but a myriad of other things, too — from shapes, textures, colours, emotions and clothes to toys. But it’s precisely because it begins so early — some studies suggest it even starts in the womb — and because nearly everything in our world is gendered that these associations seep into daily life and become almost invisible, accepted as ‘just how things are.’
This is also why it might seem ‘natural’ that women, on average, are more likely to adopt sustainable or collective solutions, including in response to climate change. After all, boys and young men are taught that to be ‘masculine’ is to be dominant, unfeeling, and individualistic, while girls and young women are taught that to be ‘feminine’ is to be caring, nurturing, empathetic and communal.
Recent polls on how people in wealthy nations view climate change seem to reflect this as well. In one survey by the Pew Research Centre, one in five men said climate change is ‘not a problem,’ compared to fewer than one in ten women. The same survey also found that men are more likely than women to believe climate change won’t harm them personally — in the US, that’s 52% of men versus just 31% of women — and less likely to consider individual lifestyle changes necessary to mitigate its effects.
But when you look at surveys conducted in low-income countries — which, despite producing only a fraction of global emissions, are most heavily affected by climate change — the gender gap essentially disappears. Both men and women in these regions view climate change as a real and visible threat and respond to it similarly.
That’s an important thing to keep in mind.
Gender is but one lens through which we should understand climate change. Race, class, geography, etc., are all critical factors, too. And while patriarchy and the gender norms it enforces exist globally, they don’t hold the same power over everyone, nor do they intersect with other systems of privilege in the same way everywhere.
American ideals of ‘traditional’ masculinity, for instance, are far more rigid and restrictive than those in, say, Denmark. For Americans, being a man isn’t just a state of being — it’s something that’s hard to earn and has to be continually proved. By contrast, for Danes, you’re a man simply if you’re no longer a boy. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the US consistently ranks at the top in global per capita meat and petroleum consumption, far outpacing most other nations. (Although other factors certainly play into it — like a lack of public infrastructure that forces overreliance on private vehicles.)
If everyone on the planet consumed resources like the average American — particularly an American wealthy man — it certainly couldn’t sustain the current global population of 8 billion. We’d need several planets for that.
However, another reason why this still doesn’t seem to bother everyone is that Western ideas of masculinity, in particular of the ‘hegemonic’ kind — which emphasises men’s need to exert power over others — are deeply embedded in the social and economic orders that have governed our world since around the Industrial Revolution. And it’s then this hybrid of patriarchal-capitalist thinking that pushes for incessant growth and dominance over ‘others’ — women, other men, children and nature — and justifies reckless consumption as a ‘right’ of certain social groups. They get to do whatever they please. We get to watch the world burn as a result.
But then, of course, any efforts to disrupt this status quo and address environmental destruction are seen as threats — not only to our economic systems but also to masculinity itself.
Unfortunately, as Katherine Marçal writes in her book The Mother of Invention:
Our culture often values the preservation of certain concepts on masculinity over death itself.
Electric vehicles are no longer seen as feminine. Thanks to male-oriented marketing and masculine designs — like Tesla’s Cybertruck, an angular, gleaming beast of a car that Elon Musk claimed was large enough to ‘mount a missile launcher’ — they are now actually positioned as the ultimate symbols of masculinity. And, unsurprisingly, recent surveys reveal that far fewer women own or even consider purchasing an electric car than men.
But this shift illustrates that our gender associations are hardly static; they evolve over time and will likely continue to do so. What’s perceived as the epitome of masculinity today could be viewed as the epitome of femininity in the future — and vice versa. (Yes, even triangular-headed creatures from outer space.)
You could also argue that what we consider as ‘traditional’ gender norms could eventually be interpreted in more beneficial ways for everyone — and for our planet. The notion of man as ‘protectors’, for instance, as historically skewed and factually flawed as it is, could be reimagined to encourage men to do more, not less, to protect the environment. Still, I believe that dismantling rigid ideas surrounding masculinity and femininity altogether in favour of a more diverse and nuanced understanding of human identity could prove far more advantageous.
This deconstruction could also significantly help in tackling climate change. It’s only when we truly move away from ideas of domination, control and rugged individualism so closely linked with masculine identities that we can prioritise the well-being of the entirety of humanity — not just a subset of it — and our planet in our decision-making processes.
The tricky question is: how can we do that?
A good place to start would certainly be to stop treating ‘traditionally’ feminine virtues like care and collaboration as inherently ‘inferior’ or ‘primitive.’ And that should extend to how men are treated in our world, too. As long as behaviours that should be seen as universally positive — being caring, empathetic, or leading a sustainable lifestyle — are labelled ‘emasculating’ and thus ‘inferior’, men may hesitate to reduce their meat consumption or reliance on cars. Why would they want to risk ridicule and the perception of not being ‘real’ men?
Of course, individual choices and the societal norms shaping them are just part of the problem. We cannot effectively address climate change without acknowledging the significant responsibility borne by the largest climate polluters — namely, a handful of massive corporations primarily based in wealthy nations. But, as I mentioned earlier, the dominant economic, political, and social systems that enable their existence operate under the same flawed logic.
It’s all one interconnected mess, but the ideals that fuel it, including those related to gender, are the same.
We really shouldn’t underestimate the power they have over us.
Just like we shouldn’t underestimate the impact we can make as individuals — especially the impact men can make today by becoming active agents of change in dismantling systems that harm them as well.
It’s unfortunate that solutions for addressing climate change are still so often gender-blind. In particular, considering that it’s precisely already existing gender inequalities that get turned up a notch or five as a result of the degradation of our natural environments.
In the long run, though, we will all pay for not challenging the cultural norms perpetuating climate change. For not realising soon enough that we can’t continue this relentless cycle of growth, disruption, and domination indefinitely.
Because we simply can’t.
If electric cars had been marketed at men maybe the outcome would have been different? However I heard that the fossil fuel companies commercially squashed electric car technology to make ICE cars dependent on their product, maybe it was both the marketing AND Big Oil.
The vegetarian/meat thing is trickier than just men keen on meat v women willing to be vegetarian. Many women find they must eat meat, there is a cohort, after years of trying and willing to be vegetarian/vegan reluctantly eat meat and are astounded to find how healthy they become. Some of us are not genetically suited, or have gut damage from excessive plant intake. I always come back to this article https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/4-reasons-some-do-well-as-vegans#4.-PEMT-activity-and-choline when I need to say some CAN do vegan long term, others are better with vegetarianism, but a certain cohort really need meat if they are to thrive. It's never as simple as we like to think.
I agree with the overall idea that masculinity is traditionally associated with violence, destruction, not caring, not giving a f***….and that these are the exact qualities we need to address to solve interrelated socio-ecological crises.
But I think the specific examples in this article fall a bit short and probably aren’t helpful from both a climate perspective (if that’s your main gig) and an anti-sexist one.
1. The example of electric cars and meat consumption omits the biggest contribution to emissions: the military. Which itself could be argued is a product of (toxic) masculinity .
“Barry Sanders is the author of a book called The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. Mainstream climate change movements do not tend to talk about militarism at all. So, the issue of climate change is effectively sanitised and made into a question of biofuels, electric cars, wind farms, and so forth, and completely detached from, first of all, the issue of violence, and secondly, every other political matter we face today.
But Barry Sanders says that, “the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency … the Armed Forces of the United States.” Sanders points out that US military aircraft consume close to two million reported gallons of oil every day; the Pentagon uses enough oil in one year to run all of the transit systems in the US for the next 14 to 22 years, and the military consumes one-quarter of the world’s jet fuel.
…Barry Sanders… says,
“even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the Earth would still be headed first and at full speed toward total disaster for one major reason. The military – that voracious vampire – produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants large and small, in the most imminent danger of extinction.””
Feminist Renee Gerlich goes on to write that framing climate change as merely a problem of “conscious consumerism” omits the systemic factors and congenitally sidesteps the largest source of emissions (military industrial complex) while placing more blame on women given women do most of the household grocery shopping.
“. Isn’t it mad that the way we think about climate change seems to place more emphasis on a woman’s choice between two types of breakfast food, than the organised bombing, shooting, and chemical warfare carried out by the world’s militaries?”
Kathleen Barry talks about how masculinity is crucial to enabling men to numb themselves sufficiently to kill in war, with no personal motivation or grievance.
https://reneejg.net/2022/10/out-of-the-fog-book-launch-talk-and-summary/
2. The article omits the damaging consequences of producing electric cars on women, children and the environment. If we care about nature, shouldn’t we care about all these things too?
The International Energy Agency projects that demand for rare minerals used in so-called clean energy (copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt) will increase by 4-8 times or more by 2050. I think other estimates say 40x increase depending on which scenario it is.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/critical-minerals-data-explorer
The negative consequences of mining for human health include respiratory complications such as pneumoconiosis, asbestosis, and silicosis caused by inhaling fine particles from the large amounts of dust generated by mining activities such as blasting and drilling.
Mercury used in mining causes a number of different health problems, including neurological disorders and kidney diseases, plus pollution and poisoning by lead, zinc and copper.
Take cobalt for example, most of which is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 80% of which is mined by Chinese companies. There are grave human rights abuses here including child labour (25,000 children involved in mining), unsafe working conditions, sexual exploitation, forced evictions, and of course human health impacts and environmental damage.
So women and men and anyone who cares is well within their rights to have concerns over EVs and to expose the dark side of “clean” energy - which is anything but!
Otherwise, pledging wholehearted support for EVs implies one is ok with trashing the people and trashing the planet as long as it doesn’t happen in “my backyard”…which is a disingenuous position and hardly environmentally friendly.
3. Meat consumption from an anti-sexist perspective.
First, would be acknowledging the importance of animal products to human health especially maternal health and for babies and children. And how women have been systemically denied access to the most nutritional foods including animal foods in patriarchal societies - men get first dibs, then sons, then, maybe a smidgen to women.
Feminist, environmental activist and former vegan Lierre Keith writes about the dubious moral, environmental and nutritional reasons for veganism in The Vegetarian Myth: https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Food/The_Vegetarian_Myth.pdf
Similarly Denise Minger, former vegan, debunks shoddy diet research on her blog and book “Death by Food Pyramid: Rescuing Good Health from Bad Science.”
And secondly, more importantly, diet messaging is harmful for both women and men. Feminist “anti-diet” dietician Christy Harrison also goes through diet literature with a fine toothed comb and finds little evidence that it’s helpful and rather, diet culture swallows up women’s lives, time, mind and money and keeps their heads full of diet and body image concerns instead of fighting the patriarchy. It’s harmful for men too for similar reasons.
If we want people to have brain space to think about environmental and social issues, they need to be freed up from diet culture and dogma so admonishing people for what they eat isn’t really helpful.
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So yeah, good idea overall but examples didn’t work for me and require much more nuance.