Yesterday I went along to a talk by Andy Atkins, the executive director of Friends of the Earth (FoE) UK that was organised jointly by the University of Leicester’s geography society and Leicester FoE. The subject being ‘Economy and the environment: Friends or enemies?’ I was prepared for it to be a little dry, but it was far from it. I tweeted most of the way through so for an indication of the sorts of things covered find me on Twitter @RoseHolyoak.

After the talk a group of us from Geography and LFoE headed to a local restaurant and for part of the evening I sat next to Andy. While waiting for the wine to come (or that's what I was doing anyway) we got talking about the differences in environmental and development organisations, in particular the gender make-up of them. Having previously worked for Cafod and Tearfund, he was struck when he moved to FoE by how much more male-dominated it was in comparison. So the question was, why are women underrepresented in the higher echelons of environmental organisations?

Andy cited the religious roots of many organisations such as Oxfam, Cafod and Tearfund, suggesting that spiritually informed charitable work, particularly in the 19th century,  was an respectable way for (more privileged) women to occupy their time. Similarly, the caring aspect of such charitable work can be viewed as drawing on conventionally feminine roles. The collaborative and cooperative organisational culture that Andy perceived within these organisations could very well be part of the reason why women are so successful within then; working practices that align with the roles and skills which women have been socialised to excel at makes organisations conducive to women’s advancement.

While the above is certainly a credible argument, I wondered why the same didn’t hold for environmentalism. Many of the earliest environmental organisations came out of women’s campaigning during the Victorian era, around similarly ‘feminine’ issues. The formation of the RSPB in 1891 was the result of the merger of two conservation groups: the Plumage League founded in Didsbury, Manchester, in 1889 by Emily Williamson; and the Croydon-based Fur and Feathers League, founded by a Mrs Phillips (Desmond 2008). Much of the need for such a conservation group was due to the popularity amongst wealthier women for exotic furs and bird’s feathers as part of clothes and fashion accessories, and so women were best placed to become aware of these issues. Octavia Hill, meanwhile, co-founder of what would become the National Trust, was an early social reformer who as well as working to improve the lives of London’s slum-dwelling communities also promoted the preservation of open spaces for the benefit of the working class.

As such it’s worth wondering why the legacy of these women’s efforts were not a part of the revival of environmentalism during the 1960s – the same period during which many development charities were founded. One aspect worth considering is the extent to which the environmental revival (or rather revolution, as emerging groups were markedly more radical than their earlier forebears) was both male-led and culturally masculine. While Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ may have been the watershed moment in alerting many to the implications of environmental destruction, for the most part radical environmental groups such as Greenpeace and FoE were founded by men, with much of their work being characterised by pioneering forms of direct action. At risk of oversimplifying things, it’s much easier to chase down whaling ships in the Atlantic if you have a wife at home to care for your children and maintain the house while you’re away.

Furthermore, while many of these groups started life with decentralised, non-hierarchical structures, as they have increasingly gained political legitimacy, their organisational structures have largely formalised to mirror those of science and industry (Seager 1993:10). The formalised hierarchy of many of the more established organisations is such that they are less attractive to women, whose participation is largely concentrated in grassroots, community-based voluntary roles. While education and community-engagement are undoubtedly crucial to the operation of these organisations, such efforts are not considered ‘work’ to the same extent, with status and legitimacy more often attached to the specialised areas of lobbying, research and litigation to which women have less access. Community work is unpaid or low-paid and frequently part-time and as such does not facilitate the same access to formal promotion structures that other roles do (Seager 1993).

Another aspect worth considering when looking at women’s underrepresentation at the higher levels of environmental organisations is the centrality of science and technology to environmental policy-making. There has long been concern over women’s participation in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects and recent figures showing that women, while still often in a minority, are enrolling in undergraduate courses in STM subjects in increasing numbers should be cause for optimism (Handelsman et al 2005). However, a closer look reveals that women’s representation decreases the further up the career ladder you go. And this is not just due to a historical legacy such that the majority of professors, because of their age, are male; recent research has empirically shown that women are discriminated against in the recruitment process (Moss-Racusin et al 2012).

Finally, women’s additional responsibilities – ranging from raising children, cooking and cleaning, to caring for elderly relatives – are such that the ‘second shift’ (Hochschild 1989) applies to women working in environmental organisations as much as anywhere else. Maybe the mistake here is to be looking at why women are underrepresented in environmental organisations and focus instead on why they are better represented in others to see what we could learn. Sadly, by that point the waiting staff had brought the wine so I was otherwise distracted.


References:

Desmond, K. (2008) Planet Savers: 301 Extraordinary Environmentalists Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing

Handelsman, J. et al (2005) ‘More Women in Science’ Science vol.309 no.5738 pp. 1190-1191

Hochschild, A. (1989) The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home, (with Anne Machung). New York: Viking Penguin

Moss-Racusin, C.A. et al (2012) ‘Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students’ PNAS vol.109 no.41 pp. 16474–16479

Seager, J. (1993) Earth Follies: Feminism, Politics and the Environment. London: Earthscan