Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Amir Maleki ¹
• Parvin Alipoor ²

¹ Associate Professor, Sociology Department, Payame Noor University, Iran

² Researcher in Social Studies and Research Institute, University of Tehran, PhD Candidate in Payame Noor University, Iran

Abstract

Environmental crisis is one of the most important global problems. Dealing with this crisis as a collective effort requires formation of environmentalism attitudes among people. What is considerable in this field is to identify the factors affecting people’s attitudes towards environmentalism especially women. Since, based on two main perspectives of ecofeminism; i.e. women's relationship with the environment and their role in solving ecological problems, women have a privileged position in regard to the environment. On the other hand, women status is notable due to their roles in nurturing children and transmitting knowledge and culture to the future generation; therefore, they have the most important role for protecting environment. Accordingly, study of the factors affecting women’s environmentalism can pave the way to attract women to participate in activities of protecting environment. The current study aims to identify the factors which affect Iranian women’s environmentalism. We have used ecofeminism, secondary analysis of fifth wave data and empirical literature for this purpose. In Iran, a sample size of 2667 subjects with multi-stage probability sampling was studied. Findings have shown that such variables as social participation, religious practice, environment knowledge, age and level of education have significant relationship with women’s environmentalism but economic class has shown to have has no effect. The research findings showed that three variables including environmental awareness, religiosity and participation explain 82% of the dependent variable variance.  

Keywords

• ecofeminism
• environmentalism
• Environmental awareness
• Religiosity
• participation