On this International Women’s Day the theme is, “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.” You might be surprised to learn this, on account of a certain hashtag being used to promote IWD (breakthebias), but that hashtag was written by a London-based marketing agency. Which is why it’s so catchy and shareable and likeable….but it’s not actually from the UN. The United Nations theme is designed to shine a light on the gender inequality built into the climate crisis. Women are more impacted by the events driven by it for so many reasons: women are the poorest, most malnourished, least educated, least politically represented, and most commonly abused humans with some of the lowest levels of human rights. In a disaster event they are most often the last rescued (because they are in carer roles) so have the highest mortality, and in the aftermath, the rates of women being abused, assaulted, and raped increases dramatically. We explored these issues a little while ago, and here’s a piece from Global Citizen highlighting some of these major concerns for specific geographies.
We think it’s only right to bring attention to female-identifying climate activists, scientists, and journalists who we recommend you get acquainted with every day, but today especially. (And if general science is your thing, check out our piece on female scientists!).
Christiana Figueres
This Costa Rican woman is largely credited for the signing of The Paris Agreement. And no matter what your thoughts are on the efficacy of this document (we’ve discussed this at length), there had been no document like it ever before, and there’s been no environmental protection document obtaining as many signatories ever since. Her trademark is feeling ‘outraged but optimistic’, she has penned many books, hosts a podcast, and has received innumerable accolades over the past decade. We admire her fiercely!
Mary Annaïse Heglar
She’s an author, editor, podcast host, climate justice essayist, and rapid fire, no-holds-barred Twitter troll to the big fossil fuel companies. Mary writes in The Boston Globe, The New Republic, Wired, and Vox, tackling the roots of the climate crisis being found in colonialism. She tells stories and inspires action!
Shruti Nath
This young woman has a Masters in Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, and specializes in chaotic weather and climate conditions and land/climate interactions, with a view to planning adaptation strategies. She utilizes AI/machine/statistical learning techniques to predict patterns. She helped develop the Swiss thunderstorm forecasting system which uses statistical learning.
Dr Katharine Hayhoe
She is an atmospheric scientist, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She has written several books, hosts a podcast, a YouTube channel, has an audience of 212,000 on Twitter, she’s the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, has had her TED talk viewed nearly 4 million times, and is also a Christian who’s married to a Pastor. This is one incredible woman we admire greatly!
Naomi Oreskes
This woman has penned 7 books and more than 150 other pieces, including essays and articles. Naomi is Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, and is a renowned geologist, historian, and public speaker. She’s a strong voice on anthropogenic climate change and all that entails.
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Ayana is a marine biologist, policy expert, author, and podcast host. She has helped develop policies for the EPA and NOAA, and has a strong focus on climate solution policy as our way out of this mess. Her writing is often published in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Scientific American, and she serves on the Board of Patagonia.
Tessa Khan
Tessa is an international human rights and climate crisis lawyer, who is also the founder and director of Uplift, a small company aimed at supporting the movement for a just and fossil fuel free UK. Prior to this company, she founded The Climate Litigation Network providing strategic litigation around the world, to accelerate legal accountability for government inaction on climate change.
Dr. Mika Tosca
Mika is a climate scientist and activist, who is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an affiliate climate researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. She has a PH.D in Earth System Science and is an accomplished academic author. Mika focuses on the intersection of climate science with the arts, design principles, and environmental aesthetics—a unique perspective. As a proud transgender scientist she also advocates for climate justice for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Kate Marvel
Kate is a climate scientist at NASA’s Godard Institute for Space Studies, an author, sought-after podcast guest, university lecturer, Postdoctoral researcher, science Fellow, TED talker, and has 54,000 Twitter followers! Her current research centers on climate modeling to accurately predict the unfolding climate crisis and rising temperatures. She tells compelling stories about how and why we should save this planet. One place you can find her writing is her climate science column in the Scientific American.
This list is in no way exhaustive….there are SO many incredible women working to help us understand the climate, our impacts on it, and how we can help minimize that. Literally too many women to name here…how awesome is that?! So look up some of these women and you’ll find information and inspiration. And today, on International Women’s Day, listen even more intently than usual to the women in your life, and seek to appreciate life from their standpoint: it isn’t easy. But if you’re feeling strong, go even deeper and find women in underrepresented and underprivileged communities to walk with and talk with. Listen to them. Hear them. Give them the space to talk, don’t talk for them. Be an ally.
