Green Swedish Woman? Photo: Barbro Björnemalm (CC: BY-NC-SA)
Every second Swede is worried, or even very worried, about climate change. That’s the answer that 1010 persons gave when a big insurance company asked them recently, anyway.
What’s interesting with this survey is that when it comes to doing something about this concern, it’s mainly the women who seem to be willing to act.
63 percent of the women in the survey said that they have reduced their consumption of electricity, water and heat at home. Only 49 percent of the men did the same things. Women were also more willing to buy organic and local products and sort out their household waste.
Research has also shown that men generally use more energy than women (here is a report about that with an English summary), and that women are more affected by climate change than men. So maybe that’s why women do more about it?
The newspaper Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish) has spoken about this with the sociologist Anna-Lisa Lindén, who has done research on consumption and climate change. She says that the differences are slowly evening itself out, but still points out the men as the biggest environmental crooks. One big reason for that is the way we still distribute work at home.
– In many households it’s the women who have the biggest responsability for planning purchases of food, children’s clothes, textiles and so on.
According to Anna-Lisa Lindén says that Swedes in general have a pretty high awareness about the environment. The problem is just that people – and in this case especially men – don’t use their knowledge.
– But there are exceptions. When a young family has its first child, the awareness increases, she says.
So, let’s all have babies! Or..?
More environmental news (in Swedish, but can be translated here):
Big oil spill outside Sweden’s West coast Göteborgs-Posten
