Climate change is a ‘feminist’ issue, claims MEP

A committee of EU politicians is attempting to argue that climate change is a feminist issue.

Nicole Kiil-Nielsen said women ‘consume more sustainably than men and show greater willingness to act to preserve the environment’

Members of the European Parliament will vote today on a report by a French Green party MEP who claims global warming “is not gender neutral”.
Nicole Kiil-Nielsen said women “consume more sustainably than men and show greater willingness to act to preserve the environment” as they tend to organise household consumption and childcare.
She argued climate change policies needed to take gender discrimination into account, especially in the developing world.

Yesterday Marina Yannakoudakis, a Conservative MEP for London, referred to Miss Kiil-Nielsen’s motion “bonkers, baseless and bad for women”.
She told the Daily Mail: “This is the kind of thing that gets the EU in general – and its Women’s Rights Committee in particular – a bad name.

“Where on earth they got the idea that climate change affects women in any way differently from men I have no idea. It would be comical if the people behind the report were not so earnest and its proposals not so patronising to women.
“Global warming is not some male plot to do women down. The climate is the same for males and females so far as I know. When it rains we all get wet.”

Miss Kiil-Nielsen’s report – Women and Climate Change – calls for a 40 per cent female quota on all EU delegations involved in climate negotiations and on the committees that allocate climate aid from member states.
It also suggests the creation of new EU-funded initiatives to help women’s groups get involved in climate policies, and for the EU to start gathering data on the “gender sensitive” effects of climate change on women.
The EU’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee, of which both Mrs Yannakoudakis and Miss Kiil-Nielsen are members, voted to adopt the report into law by a majority of 47 to 7 in January.
But the Tory MEP opposed the motion and claimed her colleagues were wasting taxpayers’ money.
To become law, it must be voted on by a majority of EU parliament members and finally by the Commission of 27 member states.