The (other) Climate Gender Gap

Fixing the (other) Climate Gender Gap: The Role of Brands

Google ‘climate change AND gender’ and you’ll be served up a fair number of hits that explain precisely why women are considered more vulnerable to climate change than men (bottom line: they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent on the natural resources which climate change threatens the most.)

But there's another important difference between the genders regarding eco-issues, and one that's currently little explored: how men's and women's feelings and behaviours regarding climate change may differ – and the extent to which brands accurately reflect those differences via their planet-friendly marketing messages.

In this paper, we look at just that, using a nationally representative poll of 2000 British men and women we commissioned as our jumping-off point. The results of that poll, along with viewpoints from marketing innovation academics, consumer marketing researchers and sustainability experts, suggest that brand marketers have immense opportunity to reframe 'green' as less stereotypically female and thus better engage with and encourage men to make green purchase choices.