How Gender Equality Can Save The Planet
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2021
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is a collaboration between A Matter Of Degrees and the Gimlet podcast How To Save A Planet.
Take a look at many of the spaces where climate-related decisions are being made — from government to business to media — and you'll notice a numbers problem. Despite being roughly half the people on the planet, women rarely have equal representation in critical climate decision-making spaces. This isn't just bad for women. It's bad for everyone.
In this episode, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson (our host) and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (host of Spotify's How To Save A Planet) take a deep dive into the data behind this idea. They speak with two sociologists about how gender inequality in climate leadership can deepen the harmful impacts of climate change, and also hinder policy changes.
They also speak with someone who has seen firsthand how women can transform an entire nation when they lead on climate.
This episode features Dr. Christina Ergas, Anne Karpf, and Wanjira Mathai.
Resources:
- We Do's Gender Climate Tracker
- Emily's List (an organization that helps Democratic women and non-binary people run for office)
- Higher Heights (invests in Black women's leadership)
- She The People (focused on helping women of color run for office)
- Matriarch (focused on helping progressive women run for office)
- She Should Run (helps women regardless of political affiliation)
- Global Witness (organization that assists environmental defenders)
Follow our co-hosts and production team:
A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes, visit our website.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a matter of degrees, stories for the climate curious. |
| 0:07.2 | I'm Dr. Catherine Wilkinson. |
| 0:12.9 | So today we have a special collaboration with our friends over at How to Save a Planet. |
| 0:22.7 | It's the second one we've done this season. |
| 0:25.4 | We're joined for this episode by my amazing co-editor of the All We Can Save Anthology |
| 0:30.7 | and How to Save a Planet co-host, Dr. Ianna Elizabeth Johnson. |
| 0:35.0 | We have really been wanting to do an episode on climate and gender, |
| 0:40.0 | a topic we're obviously quite passionate about, and I'm just so excited that we got to make |
| 0:45.5 | this happen. And also here to help us kick things off, the other co-host for How to Save a Planet, |
| 0:51.9 | Alex Bloomberg. Woo-hoo! Hey, Catherine. |
| 0:54.4 | Hello, friends. |
| 0:56.0 | And Alex's voice you all may be familiar with from the collab he did with the great Leah Stokes |
| 1:01.6 | a few weeks ago. |
| 1:03.3 | And Leah sends her best. |
| 1:04.7 | She's still away on sabbatical. |
| 1:06.8 | So, gender and climate, what are you all going to be telling us about the relationship between those two things? |
| 1:13.3 | Well, Alex, you know, Ayanna and I have been thinking about this quite a bit. |
| 1:16.9 | Yep. |
| 1:17.2 | The anthology that we co-edited, All We Can Save, includes writings from 40 women who are leading on climate in all different ways. |
| 1:26.6 | It's like a little taste of what we'd like to call |
| 1:28.8 | the feminist climate renaissance. And we hadn't planned it this way, but it actually happens to be |
| 1:34.4 | the one year mark since all we can save first came roaring its way into the world. |
... |
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