A large study from France has shown that red meat intake and car use cause men to emit 26% more greenhouse gases than women.
Beef and Bugatti are widening the emissions gender gap in France, with men causing 26% more greenhouse gas emissions than women, new research has found.
In a pre-print study of 15,000 French residents, researchers from the London School of Economics and the Center for Research in Economics and Statistics revealed that two “gender stereotypical” items – red meat and cars – are largely responsible for the difference in men’s and women’s individual emissions.
The authors analysed data from over 2,000 car models and food products. They found that the average man in France has a carbon footprint of 5.3 tonnes, while a woman’s footprint was measured at 5.3 tonnes, largely due to their consumption differences.
“Women have substantially lower carbon footprints than men in the food and transport sectors,” said Ondine Berland, a fellow in environmental economics at LSE and a study co-author. “We identify household structure, biological differences, higher red meat consumption and car usage among men as key factors driving this gap.”
Meat and cars explain emissions gap between men and women
Courtesy: Puhhha/Getty Images
There are several cultural and lifestyle reasons that explain the gap. French women are “more likely to live in large cities and poorer households, and are more often unemployed or outside the labour force – all characteristics associated with lower carbon footprints”, the study found.
Additionally, women – especially those with children – were less likely to work in jobs with long commutes. Men’s work-related trips, on the other hand, include both commuting and other business-related trips and are responsible for “most of the gender gap in transport carbon footprints”.
Meanwhile, single men and women also had lower climate footprints (and a smaller gap among them) when it came to transportation. But the opposite was true when it came to food, with women living with a partner eating a more carbon-intensive diet, likely because they adapt their dietary patterns to align with their male partners.
Even when accounting for the fact that men eat more calories and travel longer distances, eating red meat and driving cars are responsible for almost all of their remaining 6.5-9.5% emissions gap with women, the study found.
Men also tend to have higher incomes, which are linked to bigger climate footprints too. “I think it’s quite striking that the difference in carbon footprint in food and transport use in France between men and women is around the same as the difference we estimate for high-income people compared to lower-income people,” said Marion Leroutier, an environmental economist at Crest-Ensae Paris and a co-author of the study.
The study echoes research from Sweden in 2021, which found that men’s spending on meat and cars caused 16% more emissions than women, despite the amount of money being similar.
Transportation accounts for a fifth of all emissions, but road transport alone is responsible for 75% of this share. Meat and dairy production also contributes to a similar amount of emissions, with red meats like beef the biggest polluters. In France, food and transportation together make up half of all household carbon footprints.
Scientists have long advocated a shift to electric vehicles, avoiding flights, and cutting out meat as the most effective personal actions to combat climate change. But these efforts have been met with a backlash, mostly from far-right influencers who have politicised the issue as an attack on tradition and culture.
Plant-based meat needs reframing amid rise of manosphere
Courtesy: Andreea Alexandru/AP, Liver King/Instagram, James Gilbert/Getty Images, Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images | Composite by Green Queen
Carnivorous diets and raw meat are gaining popularity, with Netflix recently releasing a documentary on Liver King, a man who lives an ancestral lifestyle full of bone-and-arrow hunts, raw meat, and high liver consumption, but has been heavily criticised for his health misinformation and use of steroids.
Figures like Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and Joe Rogan have also promoted the carnivore diet and misinformed the public. Men who eat plant-rich diets have been labelled ‘soy boys’ by figures like US Vice-President JD Vance, and France’s own government has tried to ban the sale of cultivated meat and restrict the labelling of plant-based alternatives.
These efforts are effective. In the UK, for example, men aged 16-24 are twice as likely to have increased their meat intake year-on-year as men of all other ages, and three times more likely than the general population. And 24% of young men wouldn’t be open to trying plant-based meat alternatives, much higher than the 15% of women of the same age who echo this sentiment, according to climate charity Hubbub.
“Influencers often exaggerate protein requirements and the necessity of meat, while dismissing plant-based protein sources,” it said. “This can lead some young men to see plant-based diets as inadequate for muscle development and even as a threat to their masculine identity.”
Meanwhile, these figures’ endorsements are “frequently interwoven with misogynistic and climate-related misinformation” – the number of young men who think “women are as capable as men being leaders” has slumped from 80% in 2020 to 50% today.
The authors of the French study called on the food industry and policymakers to reframe plant-based meat alternatives as “compatible with strength and performance” to appeal to more men.
It dovetails with research that shows women care more about the climate crisis, and are likely to prioritise the issue when voting. “More research is needed to understand whether these differences in carbon footprints are also partly due to women’s greater concern about climate change and their higher likelihood of adopting climate-friendly behaviours in daily life,” said Leroutier.
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