A significant new study has revealed that climate change concerns are substantially influencing reproductive decisions in Australia, with women expressing far greater hesitation about having children than men.
The Gender Gap in Climate Anxiety
The survey, which polled a nationally representative sample of 2,000 people, found that 40.4% of women without children reported being moderately or very hesitant about having children because of the changing climate. This contrasts sharply with just 17% of men who shared the same concern.
Commissioned by Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, and conducted by Roy Morgan Research, the investigation into attitudes about global heating uncovered a pronounced gender divide in how Australians perceive environmental risks.
Professor Hamilton suggests this disparity points to a "gendered calculus of risk", noting that "values of care make women much more open to the alarming nature of the scientific evidence and the visceral impact that weather events have on people."
Political Divides and Educational Correlations
The research uncovered stark political divisions in climate concern. Labor, Greens and independent voters were three times more likely to express high levels of concern about climate change compared with conservative Coalition voters.
Remarkably, more than a third of Coalition voters believed the climate would not change at all, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.
Among parents, the survey found that three in five Labor voters expressed high concern about their children's future in a changing climate, compared to just one in five Coalition voters.
Education level proved to be a stronger predictor of climate concern than age, with concern about climate change much more strongly correlated with education than with generational differences.
Implications for Australia's Demographic Future
Professor Hamilton warned that rising climate concern could potentially lead to a decline in Australia's birth rate, creating a "massive disconnect between the conversations that are being had among young people about having children, and government and policy discussions about Australia's demographic future."
The findings align with a 2019 Australian Conservation Foundation survey that found one in three Australian women under 30 were reconsidering having children because of concerns about "an unsafe future from climate change."
Surprisingly, the research discovered that living through extreme weather events had only a small effect on concern about climate change. Professor Iain Walker, a social psychologist at the University of Melbourne, explained this counterintuitive finding: "People who already accept anthropogenic climate change will accept a flood or heatwave as more evidence that climate change is happening; those who already reject climate change will explain away the extreme weather events."
Despite regional areas experiencing more direct impacts from fires and floods since 2019, concern about the climate crisis was somewhat higher in cities than in regional areas.
