For many years now, youth across the globe have rallied together and have been involved in the fight for climate change, a nebulous term which describes the change in atmospheric conditions throughout the Earth’s history, a change that has, since the Industrial Revolution, been considerably accelerated by human activity. However, climate activism has been slowly distracting us from the real issue that has been plaguing societies for thousands of years: the oppression of the female sex. We will firstly explore what female oppression is and how it is more important today than ever. Secondly,  we will explore the rise of climate activism and how it undermined the systemic layers of gender inequality and finally, how certain forms of climate activism banalize female oppression and how we can move past extreme activism and focus on feminism. 

Currently, and for nearly ten-thousand years (since the start of human civilization), war has been waged: the war on women. Since the beginning of human civilization, hierarchies were developed and at the bottom of this hierarchy was placed the female sex, long before any kind of climate change arose. According to Napikoski, Engels described the woman as “the slave of a slave” and that their status, regardless of achievement or intelligence, diminished as a class-based society rose. In Canada today, women hold nearly half of all Canadian jobs (47.7%), but only occupy 36.4% of all managerial positions, and less than 29% of all legislative and executive positions. These may seem like simple numbers, but show the blaring issue of underlying systemic inequalities that women face. There are many contributing factors to this, each older than the next: gender-role constructs, benevolent sexism, internalized sexism, underlying societal blankets and the current and not-very-recent rise of anti-feminism. Young men are being increasingly exposed to misogyny online and are baptised into the “manosphere”, a term describing circles of misogynist men who feel threatened by feminism and believe that there is an underlying feminine force controlling men and secretly waging war on them by virtue of not being submissive to the patriarchy (Canadian Museum For Human Rights). According to Amnesty UK, 73% of social media users have reported viewing or being exposed to misogynistic content, with half of them having viewed it weekly. Frontiers says that most people support equality, but due to heavy disinformation propagated by right-wing leaders, they do not support the idea of “feminism”, believing that it seeks unfair disadvantages between the two sexes and attempts to put women above men, which is not the goal of feminism. This lack of feminist and gender equality literacy fuels the rise of misogyny and discrimination against women – beginning with the over-turning of Roe V Wade in the US where women lost their right to federally guaranteed bodily autonomy –and shows that right now, policies supporting gender equality are more important than ever in history. We are at the peak of global inter-connectivity and interrelativity, which normally could and should pave the way for a globally recognized feminist movement. Right? 

Apparently not. Another form of global activism has been on the rise: climate activism. Climate change defines the change in the Earth’s atmospheric conditions that has been rapidly accelerated due to human activity beginning at the start of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th century. According to the UN, climate change has led to an increase in famines, dryness, and has caused certain extreme and bizarre geo-meteorological events, such as increasing flooding, droughts and other random events such as typhoons or hurricanes which in other conditions would not occur as powerfully and/or frequently. While climate activism has achieved remarkable awareness, its focus on long-term planetary goals can sometimes overshadow immediate gender inequities. Shifting government funding and focus to climate change rather than gender equality, which, some climate activists argue, will be resolved by climate activism. Research from Cornell University has found that bureaucrats globally have been aggressively fighting for an increase in departments related to climate change, and have been rallying for government directions and, of course, funds to be reoriented towards climate change activism and action. Therefore, more government jobs (which will most likely be taken up by men) will be created, increasing taxes and continuing the ignorance of female welfare. The utter absurdity of “long term planetary thinking” when it comes to climate activism is clear. Each society has a highly specific version of misogyny, and a “planetary” way of thinking does not resolve any of such misogyny which is attached to highly particular systems. Generally supporting gender equality while fighting for bureaucratic positions to be created which will, according to the current trend of gender equality in Canada, be taken up by men, will not rectify any form of inequity. Impressively, even if women lean substantially more towards environmentalism, the majority of environmental leadership positions are taken up by men. Therefore, the vicious circle of attracting women, ignoring their welfare and putting men in places where they are fully qualified shows that current climate activism is not at all beneficial to women’s rights. Moreover, The large divide between women and men on environmentalism is evidence of traditional gender roles pervading into mainstream left-wing ideology. According to the Environmental Voter Project, substantially more women support environmentalism due to the prospect of motherhood and because they worry about their children’s future. I conclude that this divide amplifies traditional gender roles about motherhood, and that the green-movement does not spell out any solutions to such amplification.

UN Women argues that women's rights benefit from climate activism and that climate change affects women disproportionately, with approximately 80% of people displaced because of climate change being women and girls. However, the reduction of inequalities felt by women and girls globally to the quantum of “It’s because of climate change” risks the banalization of systemic, underlying components that women around the world face every single day. Reducing the fact that women disproportionately face violence, do not have control over their bodily autonomy in the majority of countries, are heavily underrepresented in executive and legislative positions is not because of climate change: it is because of systemic barriers faced by women that are each intricately inter-personal, requiring years of untangling and government focus to fix. It does not require, and is significantly harmed, by a redirection of funds towards a form of activism that does not significantly benefit it. Resolving the climate crisis will indeed help women around the world, but will do nothing to resolve systemic barriers preventing them from fully exercising their natural human rights. Climate change, relative to global female human rights, is but a mega-phone that amplifies the adverse-effects of systemic barriers on women. It is important that such a blanket be removed, which is why this essay is not an argument against climate activism but discusses why it is a distraction towards issues that have been ongoing for thousands of years. To correct climate activism, involving it more in feminist activism is not necessarily a solution, as this can risk the grouping of the two together when they are both very different on a systemic and ideological level. 

Therefore, The hyper-focusing on climate activism poses a distraction to the efforts put into creating constitutional change for women and even indirectly exemplifies traditional gender roles. Focusing more on feminism in an age where it is demonized significantly and mocked will help create societies that are more equal and sustainable, paving the way for climate activism to come in. I argue that governments should divert funds from climate activism projects that, quite frankly, do not produce much impact, towards women’s rights and the untangling of systemic barriers through constitutional change. This is the only way for women to be equally represented in society as their male counterparts, and for the beginning of the untangling of inequality. Feminism is not ‘more important’ than climate activism, but the struggle for feminism has been more ongoing and is more immediately pressing in our modern society, and therefore should be treated as a higher priority than climate change. If there is one idea to take away from this essay, it is that climate activism itself is not inherently hindering gender equality, but the hyper-focus and traction that it has gained poses problems towards actual action and merely reinforces simple "awareness" of feminism. Awareness is not enough, and real change must be made in order to rectify the oppression that women face globally.