Masculine and Feminine Natures: How Gender Shapes the Aesthetics of the Environment

• In Event: 30610 - Environmental Values, Knowledge, and Politics

Abstract

In a number of observable ways, gender shapes our social relationships to the natural environment. A robust body of research in environmental sociology has consistently found that a gender gap exists in the US surrounding various environmental topics, with women expressing greater environmental concern, more frequently exhibiting behaviors deemed “pro-environment," and assessing extant environmental problems as more severe or threatening. Elsewhere, though, researchers have found that "wild" nature spaces, the spaces that are most identified with the environment and are often the objects of environmentalist campaigns for protection, are coded as masculine and are more welcoming to men than women. Drawing on experimental survey data, we examine variability in aesthetic preferences for natural landscapes in attempt to better understand gendered trends in environmental sensibilities. Respondents were shown a series of comparisons between two images, each depicting a scenic natural landscape, and were asked to choose the image that best exemplified “beautiful nature” to them. Through analysis of respondents’ choices on these image comparisons we test whether there are observable gender differences in Americans’ aesthetic evaluations of natural landscapes. Our analysis finds significant gender differences in respondents’ aesthetic preferences as well as the meanings they attributed to the landscapes in the images, as measured through descriptions solicited from respondents. Female respondents preferred coastal beach aesthetics, while male respondents favored landscapes characterized by mountainous, rocky, or forested terrain. We argue that these different landscapes resonate with competing imaginations of what nature is and what makes it aesthetically beautiful that are rooted in gender inequalities and in the socialization of masculinity and femininity, respectively. . Feminine ideas of nature view it as integrated with or proximate to the human social world and as offering soothing revitalization, while masculine ones derive value from nature through active “conquest” of remote and externalized nature.

Authors

• Andrew McCumber, Virginia Tech

• Heather Lynch

• Tristan Bridges, University of California-Santa Barbara