Does virility have a cost for the planet?
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Grilled meat in a Toulouse restaurant. According to the study, men consume more red meat than women; yet livestock farming is a major emitter of greenhouse gases. ADIL BENAYACHE/SIPA
Analysis: Women emit on average 26% less CO₂ than men in the transport and food sectors, according to a recent study published by the London School of Economics. Here's an explanation.
This is a blind spot in climate policies: women and men do not contribute to global warming in the same way. A "gender gap" that is far from anecdotal, according to a recent study by Marion Leroutier, a lecturer and researcher at the Centre for Research in Economics and Statistics (CREST) at ENSAE Paris, and Ondine Berland, a researcher in environmental economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The two researchers compared the weight of food and transport in the carbon footprints of French men and women (1) – two consumption items that alone represent more than 50% of national emissions. The result: women emit an average of 26% less CO₂ than men.
How can this be explained? To refine their comparison, Marion Leroutier and Ondine Berland set out to break down this absolute average gap. By taking into account socioeconomic factors that can explain this difference—such as age, income, education level, and employment—the gap drops to 18%. Furthermore, women and men do not hold the same type of job, which has an impact on the kilometers traveled daily. As for diet, the calorie needs of each group differ according to medical authorities—those of women are 21% lower.
"By making these statistical adjustments, we realized that there still remained an unexplained gap between men and women of 6.5% for food and 9.5% for transport," observes Ondine Berland, co-author of the study.
Red meat and big carTwo polluting habits associated with masculinity are hidden behind these figures. In terms of transport, the car, whose power is consistent with clichés of virility, widens the gap. "It's not that women use it less, but rather that they travel in less polluting cars and have a higher vehicle occupancy rate," the researcher explains to "Nouvel Obs", adding that within households, women transport children more often. In terms of diet, men consume more red meat, which weighs on their carbon footprint .
The researchers are not convinced that women's greater sensitivity to the environment can explain these differences. This is certainly not true for the use of airplanes, one of the most polluting modes of transport: at the same standard of living, men and women take them equally. The weight of gender, through social roles and stereotypes, which influence consumption patterns, is at this stage the explanation favored by the authors.
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Deconstructing the clichés associated with masculinity – “for example, by promoting plant-based diets as compatible with athletic performance” – is one of the avenues put forward to reduce emissions in these sectors.
The study also questions the acceptability of measures aimed at combating global warming. "It suggests that, through their consumer choices, supporting climate policies is more costly for humans ," says Ondine Berland.
To date, the intertwining of gender and CO2 emissions remains a largely unexplored area of research. Much remains to be learned about how to design more equitable climate policies.
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