By Sarah Jo Dawson, IYPF President

On 14th March I attended a one day conference entitled "Climate for
Change: Women in Engineering, Science and Technology Having an
Environmental Impact, set up by the UK Resource Centre for Women in
Science, Engineering and Technology. It was an exciting week in the
UK for this topic. The politicians seemed to have taken heed of the
2006 Stern report, which stated "An overwhelming body of scientific
evidence indicates that the earth's climate is rapidly changing,
predominantly as a result of increases in greenhouse gases causd by
human activities", and had launched a UK Climate Change Bill in
Parliament. With guest speakers ranging from Malcolm Wicks (the UK
Minister for Science and Innovation) to professor Julia Slingo
(Founding Director of the Walker Institute for Climate System
Research, University of reading), leading newsreader Anna Ford as
chair, plenty of workshop and networking time, and over 150 women
delegates representing all fields of science, engineering and
technology, we couldn't really fail to have a great day.

As ever, it is so hard to summarise a day's conference in a few
words, but the main things I took from the day were:
· Women are concerned about the environment: The UKRC / EPC Climate
Change Survey conducted before the conference found 86% of Britsh
women respondents are "extremely" or "somewhat" concerned about
global warming
· According to the same survey British women are 9% more likely to
engage in "environmentally conscious" activities such as using public
transport or recycling, than men
· Women in science, engineering and technology careers are driving
forward both the understanding of climate change and progress in
mitigating its effects. However, SET cannot provide all the answers,
we need the policymakers to act and act quickly
· Even in the UK, working practices are still restricting some women
from staying in SET careers. We had some very strong women speakers
with very successful SET careers, but even some of them believed
there are still glass ceilings to women and most had experienced a
hold up or knock backwards in their career whilst having children.
· I also recived a great booklist for gender attitudes towards
environmental issues and climate change, and am including part of
this below

In 2008 IYPF will be having it's next International Young
Professionals Summit, IYPS2008. I am hoping that some of the networks
and contacts I made at this meeting will also contribute to our
proposed theme on energy and climate change.


Books and websites on gender attitudes towards environmental issues
and climate change

Norgaard, K and York, R (2005), "Gender equality and state
environmentalism", Gender and Society, vol 19, No. 4 pp506-522

Koyano K; Yanagibori, R (1999) "Awareness and action of Japanese
Women for climate change: A study on environmental opinion poll among
Japanese women", 11th International Conferendce for Women Engineers
and scientists, 24-26th July 1999 pp 401-404

Bord, R.J & O'Conner, R.E. (1997) "The gender gap in environmental
attitude: The case of perceived vulnerability to risk", Social
Science Quarterly, vol 78, no. 4: PP830-840

Hunter, L et al (2004) "Cross-national gender variation in
environmental behaviours" Social science quarterly Vol 85, no. 3,
pp678-694

Matthies, E et al (2002), "travel miode choice of women - the result
of limitation, ecological norm or weak habit?" Environment and
behaviour, Vol. 34, No. 2 pp 163-177

Women's Environmental Network, WEN, "Why Women and the Environment?"
www.wen.org.uk/health/Reports/whywomen.pdf

National federation of Women's institutes (NFWI) "Stop Climate Chaos
Coalition" (2005) www.womens-institute.org.uk/campaigns/climate-
c.shtml