Ecofeminism or Techno-centrism? Analysing the Gender-Environment concoction in the Anthropocene: A Study of OECD countries

Abstract

Women’s participation and technological innovation have a crucial role in ensuring ecological stability and environmental sustainability in the long-run. However, their relationship with environmental sustainability is an ongoing debate with diverse opinions across the continuum. The present study focuses on the empirical relevance of this debate based on the theoretical underpinnings of ecofeminism and techno-centrism, using panel data on 37 OECD countries for the period 1990–2019. The paper employs the Pedroni test to check for cointegration among the variables, Pooled Mean Group (PMG) to estimate the model, and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin test to investigate the pairwise causality among the variables. The study constructs two models, based on ecofeminism and techno-centrism and finds that both gender employment equality and R&D expenditure, which represent the ecofeminist and techno-centric arguments respectively, have a negative and significant impact on environmental degradation measured by the ecological footprint. This suggests that equality of women in the labour markets and technological innovation through R&D expenditure are both potential tools for ensuring environmental sustainability. The empirical estimation also confirms the existence of an N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve between economic growth and environmental degradation in the case of selected OECD countries in both ecofeminist and techno-centric models.