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…women are from Venus but they also have very different carbon footprints.
Difference in pay is a perennial example of the gender gap. Pension savings are another. How men dominate leadership roles in business and finance is a third. Now research indicates that there is even a gender gap in carbon emissions. Not only are men’s feet usually bigger than women’s, so is their carbon footprint.
A study by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and France’s Center for Research in Economics and Statistics highlights this hitherto less recognised aspect of why men are from Mars and women are from Venus. It might also offer a new perspective on how the alt-right is fighting a culture war.
The research, which looked at the lifestyles of 15,000 people from France, used consumption data from more than 2,000 car models and food products to shed light on how gender might affect carbon emissions.
It discovered that French men had an annual average carbon footprint associated with food and transport of 5.3 tonnes, compared with 3.9 tonnes for women, largely owing to differences in consumption. After accounting for socio-economic, calorific and travel differences, there remained a 25% food footprint gap and a 38% transport footprint gap between men and women.
The study’s headline finding is that women in France emit 26% less carbon with their diet and use of transport. The gap closes to 18% after taking into consideration socio-economic factors such as income and education. Food and transport combined make up half of the average French person’s carbon footprint.
The researchers concluded that high-emission activities often associated with men, such as eating red meat and driving cars, comprise most of the difference in carbon footprints, once variations in food quantity, distances travelled and employment status are taken into account.
French women are also “more likely [than men] to live in large cities and poorer households and are more often unemployed or outside the labour force – all characteristics associated with lower carbon footprints”. The study also found that household structure plays a key role in shaping the carbon footprint gap. People in a couple seem to converge on food, with women having more carbon-intensive diets than their single counterparts. On the other hand, gender differences in transport footprints are especially large for couples with children.
Women – especially those with children – were less likely to work and more likely to seek out jobs with shorter commutes, reducing their work-related emissions. As a result, men’s “work-related trips – which include both commuting and other business-related trips – explain most of the gender gap in transport carbon footprints”, the study discovered.
The research is among the first to investigate how gender influences an individual’s contribution to climate change. This is particularly important in light of the significant changes needed in consumption patterns and behaviour to help mitigate global warming.
The results have major implications for politicians as they shed light on how men and women could be affected differently by climate policy. Adopting consumption patterns compatible with net-zero objectives may be less difficult for women than for men, given their lower food and transport emissions. This may explain why women seem more attuned to climate change in high-income countries, the researchers say.
“Women have substantially lower carbon footprints than men in the food and transport sectors,” says LSE Fellow Ondine Berland. “Our results suggest that traditional gender norms, particularly those linking masculinity with red-meat consumption and car use, play a significant role in shaping individual carbon footprints.
“This points to the potential for information policies that challenge such norms – for example, by reframing plant-based alternatives as compatible with strength and performance.” However, efforts to promote plant-based diets have led to ‘protein politics’, a particularly unsavoury aspect of culture wars (see ‘Soy boy and culture wars’, below).
A clear lesson from the research is that public messaging and policy design must take “social norms and gender roles into account, not just market signals or price incentives”. Any strategy seeking to target “high-emission activities like driving and eating meat” must consider that this will “disproportionately affect men, especially those who associate consumption with identity or status”.
The prize for getting that right could be a big one. If all men adopted the average food and transport “carbon intensity of women”, France’s emissions from food and transport would fall by more than 13 million tonnes of CO2e a year, the study says. That’s around three times the emissions cuts that France is seeking across those sectors to meet its 2030 climate targets.
‘Soy boy’ is a derogatory term often used by internet trolls in online communities to dismiss men who are thought to lack masculine characteristics. The term, which mainly emanates from America’s alt-right, stems from the belief that soy products increase oestrogen levels in men and feminise them, an assertion not backed by clinical evidence.
The alt-right also has a long obsession with physical dominance, body image, sexual insults and the concept of the alpha male. ‘Soy boy’ is often used against vegetarians, vegans and social liberals, or any male perceived to be ‘soft’.
Popularised by, among others, Mike Cernovich, a right-wing social media personality and conspiracy theorist, the term has been used by US vice president JD Vance, and online influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate, who has more than 10 million followers on X.
Research on ‘protein politics’ published in ephemera, an independent open-access academic journal, by Lund University associate professor Alexander Paulsson and TÉLUQ University auxiliary professor Mathieu Chaput, says the alt-right is fuelled by opposition to a ‘globalist’ liberal elite that actively promotes plant-based diets in the name of sustainability.
The alt-right uses a rhetorical style, often based on conspiracy theories, traditional tropes of masculine superiority and western ‘freedom’ to harness its followers and portray alternative protein sources as a threat to both traditional values and the existing social order. Anti-science humour and jokes, and white men’s health and male self-improvement are common themes.
The researchers found that alternative protein sources such as soy are framed as part of the ‘Great Reset’ and a liberal ‘authoritarianism’ that is responsible for ‘man boobs’ and is inherently feminine. Eating meat, on the other hand, is presented as natural, healthy and not harmful to the environment.
“One consequence is that the much-needed transition to sustainable food production becomes more difficult or takes longer,” the research warns. “Yet, in many parts of the world, plant-based protein continues to constitute the primary source of protein. If the entire world is to mimic or directly replicate western meat consumption, this will have a massive negative impact on the environment – a phenomenon known as ‘global meatification’.
“Not only does this cause increasing levels of CO2 emissions, but it also occupies indigenous lands and degrades local environments in these places. What is more, the inflammatory rhetoric used by the alt-right movement against alternative proteins can also transition into a rhetoric where not only animals, but non-meat eaters are subjected to violence. We are not there quite yet, but who knows how this will end.”
Earlier research led by consultancy Ecoloop, published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology in 2021, compared spending by single men and women in Sweden and complements the French findings.
The study looked at alternatives to mainstream food, holidays and furnishings. These included plant-based foods, locally produced vegetables, second-hand or repaired furnishings, holidaying abroad by train and ‘staycations’.
It found that men’s spending causes 16% more emissions than females’. While food and holidays are responsible for more than half of all emissions for both men and women, swapping meat and dairy for plant-based foods, switching to train-based holidays and opting for second-hand
furnishings can slash people’s emissions by between 30 and 35%.
Annika Carlsson Kanyama, the researcher who led the study, said the difference between men and women must be recognised in policymaking.
“The way they spend is very stereotypical – women spend more money on home decoration, health and clothes, and men spend more money on fuel for cars, eating out, alcohol and tobacco.”
Huw Morris is a freelance journalist
