A world made by and for men – and defended by those it serves.
From seat belts and medicines historically designed and tested around male bodies to facial recognition that fails darker-skinned women most: our world was largely built by and for (white) men. So was our economics. Patriarchy – the system in which men hold power and control economic resources – did not just create gender inequality; it created the growth-at-all-costs economy that is destroying the climate. Dominance and conquest, of women and of nature, come from the same root.
The numbers tell the story. Marketing manufactures demand for things nobody needs. The market prices nothing that matters: recent inequality analyses (Oxfam with the Stockholm Environment Institute) show the richest 1 percent account for a vastly disproportionate share of emissions – in some assessments more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity. "External" costs – the true social and environmental price of products – stay off the books, while carbon pricing has been weakened by exemptions and lobbying. And the discount rate quietly writes future generations out of every investment decision.
The pattern extends across borders and centuries: colonialism and imperialism – cash crops, depleted soils, compensation paid to slave owners rather than the enslaved – laid the foundations of today's unequal world economy. The Global North grew rich on emissions beyond any fair share; the countries least responsible now face the harshest impacts, from Caribbean islands rebuilding after hurricanes to communities displaced by drought. This is an economy of violence – toward nature, climate and human beings – and it will have to be dismantled, not decorated.
Without equal rights, women can never contribute equally to solving the climate crisis. And the rights ledger is grim. Reproductive rights are moving backwards: in the United States, access to abortion has fragmented since 2022, and analyses associate stricter bans with higher pregnancy-related mortality – hitting Black women hardest. Self-determination is violently contested: the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests that erupted in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini showed both the stakes and the courage.
The economic gaps compound: World Bank tracking shows legal restrictions on women's economic participation remain widespread. Forced labour affects tens of millions worldwide, with women and girls disproportionately represented. Pay gaps persist everywhere – in the U.S., women earn around the low-80-cents on the dollar, substantially less for Black and Latina women. Parental leave remains profoundly unequal: more than 80 countries offer no paid paternity leave at all. And capital? An estimated 90 percent of billionaires are men; a tiny, male-dominated elite controls wealth comparable to the poorest half of humanity.
Political representation completes the picture: women remain a clear minority among heads of state and government – hovering around the mid-teens as a share of countries – and full parity in cabinets or parliaments is rare. The pattern the book documents is chilling: the closer women get to power, the fiercer the backlash. These are not separate issues from climate. They are the preconditions of the solution.
Formal power skews male – but the deeper blockage is informal: the old boys network of friendships, lobbies and revolving doors where the real decisions are made. In the Netherlands, the parliamentary inquiry into Groningen gas extraction concluded that governance failed citizens for years and that the relationship between the state and the fossil operator was too intertwined, with insufficient oversight. Lobbying transparency remains limited and fragmented; former officials walk into fossil-sector "public affairs" jobs at multiples of their salary.
The same networks manufactured decades of doubt. Internal research at major oil companies – most notably Exxon – shows core climate risks were understood internally long ago, while public messaging emphasized uncertainty and delay. Strategists pushed "climate change" as a softer frame than "global warming"; BP helped popularize the individual "carbon footprint," shifting attention from systemic regulation to personal guilt. Carbon-major datasets show a relatively small group of fossil producers accounts for a large share of historical emissions – firms overwhelmingly led by men.
And the network polices its boundaries. Women in politics receive disproportionate, personalized online hate. All-female founding teams receive only a low single-digit share of venture capital, while research shows investors literally ask women different questions – about risk, not potential – even as women-led startups perform strongly. Roughly two hundred environmental and land defenders are killed in many recent years. Sexual harassment reaches into climate science and negotiations. Every one of these mechanisms costs the climate movement talent, time and truth. The gentlemen's agreements must end.
“European settlers viewed nature and the land as something inert to be conquered and consumed without limit. The colonists' worldview – accumulate, accumulate, accumulate – got us where we are today.”