The profound under-representation of women at COP21 — and the striking implications
On Tuesday morning, I was thrilled to wake up long before the sun rose so I could listen to the happenings in Paris live. I decided to tune into the Joint High Level Segment, which was essentially a repeat of the leaders event for second tier diplomats. The leader opened the talks with an ode to timeliness, so of course the event started 13 minutes late and almost every delegate went over their allotted three minutes to the tune of an alarm ringing every thirty seconds after their time was up. But then I was shocked — only two of the first fourteen speakers were women. Upon further consideration, this gender imbalance made sense. Even in the United States, a country that’s just about as developed as you can get, women only comprise 19.4% of the house and 20% of the Senate. However, I can understand that I forgot that there’s such a gender imbalance among politicians and world leaders. In my life, all of my professors this semester are women. A large majority of the students in my engineering major are female. I live in an all girls residence at MIT. Gender imbalance doesn’t usually play out until people are much older than undergraduates.
Ironically enough, Tuesday was “Gender Day” at the negotiations. Having women in decision-making positions is important, which is why it’s great that Christina Figueres is the Secretariat of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, COP21 is still heavily male-dominated. AnneMarie Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business and the Atlantic article Why Women Still Can’t Have it All, agrees that women are important in politics. She points out that in a study of 64,000 women and men in thirteen countries, people of both genders picked stereotypically feminine traits — like collaboration, sharing credit and patience (all critical to the success of the climate negotiations) — as the ones that will solve today’s global challenges. At least two-thirds of the respondents believed the world would be a better place if “men thought more like women”. As sexist as this may sound, another study finds that women in politics actually do pay more important to the disadvantaged overall.
At its best the gender imbalance of women in politics is due to the holdover of societal norms of men in power from earlier times. At its worst, its no different than the cry of taxation without representation from the patriots of the American Revolution 250 years ago. It is interesting to consider the idea that having more women involved with global climate change negotiations could improve final agreements.
One woman stood out to me among the crowd of diplomats at the Joint High Level Segment Tuesday morning. Nigeria’s Environment Minister Amina Mohammed’s eloquent speech ended with a Nelson Mandela quote that applies to the negotiations: “It always seems impossible until it is done.” However, I think this quote applies to women in politics too. Today, it might seem impossible to change the gender norms around the world. However, in order to promote fairer climate policy we need more women in power. To get better environmental treaties, the world needs to elect, promote, appoint women to political positions of all levels, and this is possible. Christina Figueres and Amina Mohammed are spectacular examples of the effect women in power can have, but they are just the start.
