As a 2016 study confirmed, environmentalism is widely perceived as feminine behavior. Even today, caring and nurturing behavior is associated with women—and that includes taking steps to sustain the environment.
But as this new paper points out, specific types of pro-environment behavior can align with either masculine or feminine stereotypes. It also reports that engaging in the "wrong" type of environmentalism can lead people to wonder about your sexuality, and perhaps even avoid socializing with you.
"Behaviors don't just help us accomplish something concrete; they also signal something about who we are," lead author Janet Swim, a Pennsylvania State University psychologist, said in announcing the findings. "Line-drying clothes, or keeping tires at proper pressures, may signal that we care about the environment, but if those green behaviors are gendered, they may signal other things as well."
In the journal Sex Roles, Swim and her colleagues describe three studies about the impressions made by specific types of green behaviors. In the first, 170 participants recruited online were asked to evaluate a fictional character named either David or Diane, whose daily routine included several environmentally friendly activities.
These were either actions traditionally associated with women, including recycling and using a reusable shopping bag; actions traditionally associated with men, such as caulking windows and doors and donating to a waterfowl sportsman's group; or gender-neutral actions like paying bills online or turning off the air conditioner.
Participants then picked the personality traits they felt described this character, and gave their impression of his or her sexual identity using a 10-point scale from heterosexual to homosexual.
Across the board, David or Diane was "perceived as being more likely to have positive feminine than positive masculine traits"—confirmation that certain green behaviors are not associated with manliness.
Participants who learned that David engaged in behaviors associated with women did not, on average, view him as gay. Still, they "were uncertain of his heterosexual identity," the researchers write.
A similarly structured follow-up study confirmed these results. People who engaged in gender-incongruent green behaviors were "rated as less likely to be heterosexual," the researchers write, "suggesting that people were questioning targets' heterosexual identity rather than declaring them to be gay or lesbian."
A final study suggested these evaluations can have real-world consequences. After participating in a similar exercise, 303 people were asked who they would be interested in speaking with about environmental behaviors.
"Gender-bending women were socially avoided by men," the researchers report. They add that this phenomenon appears to be driven by men's "discomfort engaging with a woman who is not clearly heterosexual."
