Feminine feelings key to advancing global warming agenda, white males into feelings before facts help-study

• Merely saying one 'cares,' no matter the facts or anything else, makes one better and entitled to drown out opposing views. ed
  

9/15, "US women are more likely to accept climate science than men, study says," Guardian UK, posted by L. Hickman

• Reports on "an academic paper which looks into the "effects of gender on climate change...journal Population and Environment examined eight years of data from Gallup's annual environment poll"... about knowledge and concern in the American public"...published in the September issue.

"Men still claim they have a better understanding of global warming than women, even though women's beliefs align much more closely with the scientific consensus," he said. McCright added that the gender divide is likely to be explained by "gender socialisation": boys learn that masculinity emphasises detachment, control and mastery,

• whereas girls develop traits of attachment, empathy and care. It's these latter qualities which McCright believes makes
  

• women more likely to "feel concern about the potential dire consequences of global warming".

After analysing the Gallop data, he found:

Women express more concern about climate change than men do. A greater percentage of women than men worry about global warming a great deal (35% to 29%), believe global warming will threaten their way of life during their lifetime (37% to 28%), and believe the seriousness of global warming is underestimated in the news (35% to 28%).

The conclusions of the paper are interesting given just how "male" the climate debate can appear at times. Female voices in this arena are noteworthy, in part, because they are so rare. I suppose it could also be noted that the

• climate debate is dominated by white, middle-class English-speakers....
  

One extra pause for thought in McCright's paper is provided in the final paragraph:

Perhaps, as some suggest (e.g., Smith 2001), gender is not as important for explaining environmental concern as is

• a feminist orientation.
  

Somma and Tolleson-Rinehart (1997) find that individuals –

• both women and men – who support feminist goals express greater environmental concern.
  

Thus, future research should prioritise the use of more refined measures of gender and perhaps examine

• individuals' beliefs
  
• about
  
• feminism."...

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via Climate Depot