Women are at greater risk from global warming than men, claims MEP in 'bonkers' EU row



Nicole Kiil-Nielsen (above) claims women are more at risk from climate change than men

A bizarre row has broken out among EU politicians over whether climate change is a feminist issue.

Members of the European Parliament will vote today on a report by a French Green party MEP who claims global warming ‘is not gender neutral’.

Women, claims Nicole Kiil-Nielsen, ‘consume more sustainably than men and show greater willingness to act to preserve the environment’ as they tend to organise household consumption and childcare.



She said that discrimination against women could be made worse in the developing world if climate policies do not take gender discrimination into account.

She was yesterday subjected to a withering attack from Marina Yannakoudakis, a Tory MEP for London, who called her motion ‘bonkers, baseless and bad for women’.



The report – Women and Climate Change – calls for a 40 per cent female quota on all EU delegations in climate negotiations and on the committees that allocate climate aid from member states. Funding is set to reach £62billion a year by 2020.



Warming: MEPs are due to vote on a report about feminism and global warming

The report also calls for new EU-funded initiatives to help women’s groups get involved in climate policies, and for the EU to start gathering data on the ‘gender sensitive’ effects of climate change on women.



Mrs Yannakoudakis said: ‘This is the kind of thing that gets the EU in general – and its Women’s Rights Committee in particular – a bad name.

‘Where on earth they got the idea that climate change affects women in any way differently from men I have no idea. It would be comical if the people behind the report were not so earnest and its proposals not so patronising to women.



'Global warming is not some male plot to do women down. The climate is the same for males and females so far as I know. When it rains we all get wet.’

Mrs Yannakoudakis and Miss Kiil-Nielsen are both on the EU’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee that voted to adopt the report into law by a majority of 47 to 7 in January.

Blast: Tory MEP Marina Yannakoudakis attacked the report about feminism and global warming

The Tory MEP opposed the motion, accusing her colleagues of making a mockery of a serious environmental issue and wasting taxpayers’ money.



To become law, it must be voted on by a majority of EU parliament members and finally by the Commission of 27 member states.

While the parliament has 754 members, sources said few were likely to attend the session today because many MEPs fly home on Friday.

Mrs Yannakoudakis added that the quota proposal was an insult to the women making a difference in climate diplomacy, including EU climate chief Connie Hedegaard who helped broker an agreement after days of deadlock at the latest climate summit in South Africa.

She added: ‘I don’t believe that the Women’s Rights Committee is frivolous. It covers important issues such as equal pay, domestic violence and human trafficking. However not every subject can be viewed through the lens of a woman.’



Miss Kiil-Nielsen cited research showing women are 14 times more likely to die during natural disasters and said this would apply to those caused by climate change such as drought, famine and malaria.

She said in a statement this week: ‘During every crisis and every revolution we always hear we should first solve the problem and that women’s rights will come later.

'But this reasoning is dated and ineffective.’



