Gender plays an important role in who is most affected by climate change — and who is most likely to contribute to it. Women are 14 times more likely to be killed as a result of extreme weather and can continue to be impacted post-disaster by problems like increased domestic violence. At the same time, environmentally-friendly practices such as carrying reusable bags, becoming vegetarian and driving smaller cars are seen as feminine and therefore undesirable for men, who can have higher carbon emissions.

Consider vegetarianism. According to one study done in Vancouver, a relatively vegetarian-friendly city: “In North America, manhood is still considered a precarious state, easily lost and requiring constant validation. Through purposefully abstaining from meat, a widely established symbol of power, status and masculinity, it seems that the vegetarian man is perceived as more principled, but less manly, than his omnivorous counterpart.”

However, such connections between masculinity and environment-friendly behaviours go beyond choices about food. In an account of a man who bought a Prius: “[He] had some adjustment problems. He missed looking down on other drivers from the lofty perch of his Sport Trac. And he grimaced when his friends asked whether he was carrying a purse. ‘Let’s face it,’ he sighed, ‘the Prius isn’t the most masculine vehicle on the planet’.”

Recently, while reading about plastic bag legislation, I found that even carrying reusable bags could be seen as something that women do — and therefore considered humiliating: “‘I’m embarrassed to bring my own [tote bag],’ he said, adding that it is ‘mostly women who do it’.”

In addition to potentially creating a gap in environmental action between genders, these can also provide ammunition for men to use on other men. A Sikh man who was recently attacked was first subject to “obscenities and racial slurs, including “Bin Laden”, “Terrorist”, “Go back to your country”, and “Why are you driving that small Prius, I’ve got a big SUV”.

Why do these stereotypes matter when it comes to reducing carbon emissions? Even in nations known for their gender equality, there are differences in energy use by men and women, largely due to behaviour. For example, in Sweden, which ranks fourth in the Global Gender Gap Index: “Single men used about 20 per cent more energy than women in all age groups, mostly due to their higher energy consumption for transport,” which was “100 per cent more” than the amount of energy women used. This difference was largely attributed to differences in car use. Employed women tend to “make shorter work trips, are more inclined to use public transport and make more trips to serve another person’s travel needs, while they also drive far fewer miles per year than men”. While there were certain consumption categories in which women generally used more energy than men, the overall energy use among men was still higher.

Stereotypes of environment-friendly actions as more effeminate — and therefore undesirable — could have implications for climate action.

There are efforts underway to address the connection between gender equality and climate change at the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris, and at the same time, we need to also explore ways to eliminate this cultural barrier to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While some suggest changing the marketing of lower impact products to be more appealing to men, a few vegan men are taking it into their own hands to redefine masculinity itself to be about “protecting the planet, not dominating it”. (It should be noted that although there are more female vegetarians, there are more male vegans; it’s suggested that this is because there’s “something hard core about veganism,” showing that the reality of who’s actually living a certain way is more complex than stereotypes indicate.)

But we need to go even further than imprinting veggie burgers with grill marks or replacing “meat” with “virtue” as a marker of masculinity and examine why something that’s considered effeminate is automatically undesirable. As other feminists have pointed out, it’s often assumed that masculine behaviour is the default that everyone should aspire to; women are often told to speak and act “more like men” in order to be successful.

Replacing one definition of masculinity with another, lower impact one is a step, but we also need to examine the roots of these stereotypes — and start rethinking the perception of “feminine” as automatically undesirable — to ensure that there’s one less barrier towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Bhavya Reddy lives in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and chairs its environmental committee. She has also created lesson plans on sustainability, available at bhavyareddy.com