A quick Google search will give you a list of countries at the forefront climate policy. Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Iceland and Finland rank among these champions. These countries also rank in the top quartile for the proportion of women who have served in government positions.

I can’t say that these two statistics are directly correlated, but I will say it is suspicious. As a woman who will soon graduate with a bachelor’s degree focused on climate change, I spend a lot of time thinking about the role I want to play in climate solutions, and how my gender will affect my success.

March is Women’s History Month, a time when we are encouraged to recognize women’s contributions and continue our advocacy for gender equality. But this March feels different — warmer, with temperatures edging record highs. Maybe it is time to follow the lead of Denmark, Sweden and the like and elect women into positions of power where they can implement aggressive climate solutions.

When women’s opinions and ideas are heard in climate policy, we see more meaningful implementation of climate solutions. There are many concrete reasons for this that are grounded in research (not just my personal convictions as to the brilliance of women). I am choosing to focus on two: women are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis, giving them unique insights into the solutions needed for resilience and adaptation, and women are inherent nurturers and therefore can better provide the care our planet requires.

I hope this does not come as a shock to anyone, but the climate crisis disproportionately affects minority groups such as women. (It is worth noting that adding racial or economic inequalities onto such gender imbalances only makes this discrepancy more stark.) Women in
developing countries bear outsized responsibilities for securing food, water and fuel for their families, all of which are tasks that increase in challenge with climate change.

Magnified strain caused by climate change exacerbates conflicts and vulnerabilities, heightening risk of gender-based violence. When extreme weather disasters strike, women are 14 times more likely to die than men due to a lack of information, mobility, power in decision-making and access to resources. Globally, an estimated 80% of climate-displaced individuals are female. These are harrowing facts, but these experiences give women the necessary knowledge to enact change where it is most needed.

If we are able to make more space for female leadership in policy and climate action spaces, we will increase our understanding of the problems faced by front-line populations and therefore be better equipped to produce solutions. Who better to fix a problem than the people being primarily affected by it?

Really, it’s ironic that we have positioned women to be vulnerable to climate change, as over two-thirds of family caregivers are female. It has also been shown that women have a broader neurological capacity for empathy and a higher cognitive ability to integrate emotional information into decisions than men. There is ongoing debate as to whether nature or nurture is behind these statistics and neurological differences, but regardless women are caregivers and our planet needs care.

Combating the climate crisis will mean reinventing our collective perspective and building individual connections to Earth. Emotion is therefore a powerful tool in climate solutions, and one that women (either inherently or through conditioning) possess in spades. If centering empathy in climate policy means centering women, then we must increase the mere 27% of legislative seats that are held by women globally.

Changing our current system does not come without opposition. Filling gender quotas means expertise is not the only hiring metric, limiting the focus on pure policy and shifting attention to diversity. Worries arise that efforts to increase female participation could lead to tokenism and the appointment of less qualified candidates. These concerns, however, miss the point.

Our climate is changing at an exponential rate — on average we are up 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1850. It is past time for different leadership that can reshape the disastrous path we are heading down.

Continuing to exclude women based on historic sexist precedents not only takes away half of the world’s brainpower, but also ignores the fact that women hold valuable insights into the impacts of climate change and the solutions needed, and possess increased ability to use empathy in decision making.

We must vote at every opportunity (big and small). Show up, educated and ready to elect female candidates into positions of power. Think critically about the importance of diverse perspectives. Join a local climate group. Listen to and support the women who show up and share their perspectives. Find female climate advocates in your community. Reach out, offer support, listen and learn. Bringing communities closer only makes them stronger.