Why is caring for the planet considered ‘unmanly’?
That’s a question Joseph Henderson, a lecturer at the University of Vermont, has been grappling with recently. There’s research suggesting that boys care less about the planet than girls, and are less likely to take climate action. Henderson has seen evidence of this gender divide himself, in his classrooms.
He recently embarked with Pasha Dashtgard, an American University research assistant professor, on an effort to study how political, cultural and geographic differences influence boys and young men and their engagement with climate issues.
I recently caught up with Henderson about this work, which is funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and what he thinks schools can do to ignite a concern for climate change among males.
Tell me what inspired this work and what your goals are for it.
I’ve been teaching university courses on climate change and environmental education for some time now and have noticed a growing gender divide in how young people engage with climate change and other environmental issues. Young women seemed disproportionately engaged — including in the educational dimensions — than young men, and that pattern seemed to widen the longer I taught. While some young men are certainly engaging with these issues, many are not, and as a scholar and educator that’s just an interesting phenomenon to examine. I’ve also had a few male students over the years who have engaged in climate change from a place of political extremism. While not new, this trend toward ecofascist engagement with environmental issues appears to be resurgent as climate change conditions worsen. We know that across Europe and North America, far-right movements are weaponizing masculinist ideologies and climate denialism in ways that endanger democratic stability and planetary survival. This is a problem.
Our current work investigates differences between the United States and Scandinavia, given the very different kinds of ecological and gender socializations that occur in these places. Ultimately we want to identify educational strategies that have successfully engaged boys and young men in climate change work and move them toward socially and ecologically flourishing futures.
What research is there on men and boys’ involvement in climate issues?
There’s a broad scholarly literature in both environmental sociology and political science on gender differences in environmental engagement that shows that girls and young women are more likely to express concern about — and thus the need to care for — the natural world. In the context of climate change, girls and young women tend to express greater concern about the issue, are more likely to support adaptation and mitigation policies, and are more likely to report engaging in pro-environmental behaviors. Girls and young women are also more likely to be effective climate educators too, although this is an area that needs more scholarship. Conservative white men are the cohort most likely to deny the science of climate change and tend to act accordingly.
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Naturally, one might ask why this is the case. A leading hypothesis is something called the “threatened masculinity” phenomenon whereby manhood is experienced as precarious and in need of constant reinforcement via the performance of “traditionally” masculine behaviors. Much like caring for children, caring for nature is often culturally coded as a feminine quality and is thus resisted by more gender insecure men. This effect appears to be stronger in more economically developed countries, suggesting that men in more affluent nations like the United States are: 1) more likely to benefit from existing social and economic conditions, and 2) are thus more likely to deny scientific findings that disrupt the status quo that benefits them.
Why are boys and men in some cases reluctant to engage in environmentalism? What are the barriers keeping them from caring about climate change?
The political scientist and gender scholar Cara Daggett’s work on “petro-masculinity” is useful to think about here, as she shows how particular kinds of authoritarian masculinity are wrapped up in fossil fuel economies and related cultural logics that have to do with dominating nature and others. You can see this phenomenon in action when certain kinds of men “roll coal” on bicyclists and hybrid vehicles, or when political leaders use militaries to dominate other countries for oil. I once had a student tell me that he would never drive an electric vehicle because “that would be gay.” In that moment he was expressing a certain kind of male insecurity applied to automobile culture. These are extreme examples though, and there are certainly lots of other men who are socialized differently to care about people and planet. We need to figure out better ways to engage young boys and men in environmental work, including environmental education, hence our current research.
What can schools do to engage more men and boys in environmental issues?
This is one of the main goals of our research: to understand the various ways that boys and young men engage (or not) with climate change. We are actively studying this right now, so we’ll have to get back to you with what we find!
In general though, I tend to think a lot about the late Pope Francis and his Laudato si’ encyclical, which urged humanity to develop forms of ecological education that care for “our common home.” Here in the United States, we do not do a great job of widespread environmental or climate education. While there are certainly bright spots, this kind of education is generally underdeveloped, underfunded and deprioritized across the American educational sector. This is just not the case in other places such as the Nordic countries, where nature-based environmental education is just a common occurrence in schools. Nevertheless, there are a number of things that U.S. schools and educators can do:
- The first thing I’d advocate for is just good general environmental education across the life course, and starting at a young age. There are a number of things that primary educators can do to engage young children in climate change education, for example. We know that young people care about each other and nature. That ethic needs to be nurtured.
- Related to this, we need to rethink what we mean by a “school” and where education occurs. A sad fact of American schooling is that many children spend far too much time inside the confines of increasingly locked-down buildings, a situation that makes it very difficult to engage young people in outdoor or place-based forms of education. We know that place-based environmental and climate education is a key strategy for engaging young people in issues that matter, but our institutions often work against educators trying to enact those kinds of pedagogies.
- Educators need to push back against high-stakes testing regimes that have narrowed teaching. Many teachers report that these policies have limited their ability to engage young people in meaningful experiences related to their lives, producing a kind of alienation from school. Here in New York State, this is starting to change, and our Board of Regents is changing graduation requirements to move away from these exams and toward more meaningful things like climate change education.
- As young people develop, it is imperative that educators engage them in learning experiences related to climate and environmental justice. It is only through attention to power dynamics and structural injustices that young people can develop the critical thinking skills necessary for truly understanding the climate crisis. Tom Roderick has an excellent book on how to do this that I highly recommend.
- Finally, recognize that many young men feel economically and socially adrift right now, given broader societal changes. We need to create educational programs that allow them to take responsibility for caring for the Earth and one another. I’m thinking about the kinds of green energy and green building projects that involve solving tangible problems in specific places, often via physical labor. Get them involved in solving issues that matter to their local communities.
What I’m reading:
Eighty-three percent of middle schools now take an interdisciplinary approach to science instruction, integrating physical science, life and Earth/space science rather than teaching them separately, according to a study of nearly 2,200 schools by NWEA. The research group says that approach enables students to more effectively tackle complex topics such as climate change, which combines physics, biology and human systems.
A University of Utah student said she was asked by the school to remove a mention of “environmental justice” and the phrase “communities disproportionately affected by climate change” from an Earth Day flier, reports The Salt Lake Tribune. A university spokesperson said the flyer had to meet “institutional neutrality” requirements in line with Utah System of Higher Education policy that forbids schools from taking a political stance.
Want to hear more from Joseph Henderson on why caring about the planet is considered ‘unmanly’? Listen to this interview on KHSU, a local radio station in California.
Climate-related damage to school and teaching infrastructure has already cost schools in Eastern and Southern Africa roughly $1.3 billion and led to up to $140 billion in lost future earnings, UNICEF estimates.
San Francisco is encouraging child care centers to swap their gas heaters for electric heat pump versions through a pilot program that could be a model for places seeking to decarbonize their buildings and expose children to cleaner air, reports Canary Media. The outlet also reported on an effort by Palo Alto, California, school children to raise awareness about the health and environmental hazards of gas stoves.
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.
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