This week saw the first all women NASA space shuttle journey when Naoko Yamazaki, Stephanie Wilson and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger made history into herstory in Florida.
But elsewhere it has not been a good week for women. With just 19% women in parliament we now wait to see how many will be re-elected and how representative the government will be. Based on the last weeks performance from the top parties they will be woefully inadequate, in all the coverage I failed to see any key women speaking about their politics other than the Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas MEP who is standing for MP in Brighton.
It really does matter if more women are elected. Female political representation means women's interests are more likely to taken into account at a leadership level. Steps have to be taken in political decision making forums to address problems in a gender sensitive way and when they so often are not, men are not necessarily there remembering we exist. In fact there is evidence that without women, policies are introduced that are unhelpful to women, increasing our workload, exacerbating gender discrimination and widening inequalities.
There is evidence that developed countries with higher levels of female political representation have been most successful in reducing their carbon dioxide levels overall. In fact of the 16 countries ranked by the UNDP as having high human development which had reduced CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2004, 13 had a higher proportion of female politicians.
Strong evidence also exists over a number of years, that women tend to be more concerned about environmental issues than men. It has also been shown that when they are allowed in the negotiations, they influence the outcome with female policy-makers tending to favour education and behaviour change methods over technological solutions.
The world economic system is patriarchal and women statistically hold few positions f power globally. Men dominate decision making in the most polluting industries too, which have failed to prioritise climate change. In fact, the Women's Environmental Network report Gender and the Climate Change Agenda, shows that of those companies responsible for 67% of the FTSE 100 emissions had 100% male chief executives, and of the 42 combined committee members, only 6 were female.
In fact women represent only 17% of FTSE boardroom appointments, and constitute only 19% of scientists and engineers. The Norwegian government took a risk in 2003 when they made a law stating boardrooms had to have 40% females. Business was furious and resisted but from just 6% representation the target was met ahead of schedule. Research highlighted the fact that the policy had improved the quality of the debate and the financial performance.
But equal representation between men and women in politics is right and just because it is our right as human beings, not because of environmental gains that may be possible. There are so many reasons why we need to have an equal and just world, being inclusive seems to me to be one of the very fundamentals.
Women's Environmental Network report available to download free: www.wen.org/resources
