Audience: Women

Many people communicating for social change are exploring how to tell diverse and inclusive stories that center marginalized communities while building understanding about how inequality persists. Intersectionality is an important tool to help us tell great stories that help us understand systemic issues. Five guiding principles to telling intersectional stories: Show, don’t tell; Provide historical context; Uplift the voices of marginalized people; Tell whole stories; and, Radically reimagine the world.
  

If we focus on women, we can persuade twice as many people for the same resources. Time and again, women just appear to be significantly more persuadable to become climate advocates than men. In other words, when men and women are shown the same messages, we see significantly higher increases in “support for government action on climate change” with women. Fossil fuel industry messaging works on men, but not much on women. In a test about job creation versus job loss, which pitted a pro-climate message against an ad from the oil-and-gas industry, women were two times more likely to be persuaded to strongly support climate action. Even after viewing the fossil fuel industry’s ad, they remained strong supporters for climate action. In contrast, viewing a fossil fuel industry ad tended to decrease support for action among men; viewing a pro-climate message, which would otherwise increase support among men on its own, did not counteract the fossil fuel industry’s job loss message.

Globally, women are the most impacted by climate change, but they’re also at the forefront of its solutions. “Women as a constituency are a strategic, powerful, and beautiful force that is often not recognized, supported or mobilized into action — despite clear evidence that women are key to making the societal, economical, political and ecological changes we so desperately need.” – WECAN
And while it’s difficult to speak about women in general as an audience segment (as we consist of 160+ million diverse individuals in the US alone), there are specific trends that are useful for climate advocates to take into account in their public engagement efforts.
             

We celebrate Pride at the end of June to remember the Stonewall rebellion/riot to fight police oppression. I joined the LGBTQ movement and the climate movement because I want to end suffering and protect beautiful places and people. Both these movements are about health, justice, resilience, and liberation. As a queer climate advocate, I think it’s important to draw direct connections across liberation struggles, the fight for queer liberation and the climate justice movement, so we can build solidarity and sharpen our political analysis on how to win and expand a social base of power that sees our common interest.