Experts warn that gender inequality is destroying the environment

As if we needed another reason to fight for women's rights, it recently emerged that our environment could be suffering as a result of our inequalities. 

In a special issue of the prestigious journal Science, academics warned how our spiralling population, and need to grow large amounts of food, is contributing to the loss of species and habitats around the world.

It is estimated that the global population will hit 11 million by the end of the century, thus increasing our necessary food production by a massive 30 per cent.

So, how does this relate to women’s rights?

Well, in one of the papers featured in the journal, Professor Eileen Crist, of Virginia Tech, and his colleagues, argue that little action has been taken to control the rate at which the human population is growing and this is largely due to the lack resources available to women. 

“Wherever women are empowered educationally, culturally, economically, politically, and legally, fertility rates fall.”

“Populations tend to move toward states of zero or negative growth when women achieve equal standing with men, as long as family planning services and contraceptives are readily available.”

The journal put a huge emphasis on the importance of female education, referring to birth statistics in Africa to illustrate their point.

“African women with no education have, on average, 5.4 children; women who have completed primary school have 4.3 children, and a big drop, to 2.7, correlates with completion of secondary school; for those who go on to college, fertility is 2.2.’’

So, simply put, man, woman, child or animal, we could all benefit from improving gender equality.