{"id":3670,"date":"2020-03-08T10:30:29","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T03:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/?p=3670"},"modified":"2024-05-28T16:02:55","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T09:02:55","slug":"the-fossil-fuel-industrys-genderwashing-exposes-another-layer-of-their-hypocrisy-%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/story\/3670\/the-fossil-fuel-industrys-genderwashing-exposes-another-layer-of-their-hypocrisy-%ef%bb%bf\/","title":{"rendered":"The fossil fuel industry\u2019s \u201cgenderwashing\u201d exposes another layer of their hypocrisy \ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Every year when&nbsp;<strong>International Women\u2019s Day<\/strong>&nbsp;comes around on the 8th of March, it\u2019s now normal to see&nbsp;<strong>corporations jumping on the opportunity<\/strong>&nbsp;to make their brands appear more&nbsp;<strong>interested in gender equality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n<p>Companies organise or sponsor Women\u2019s Day events, or even repackage their products or run promotions aimed at women.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>The fossil fuel industry is no different<\/strong>. As companies who have&nbsp;<strong>damaged their public image by ignoring the pollution they cause<\/strong>, International Women\u2019s Day looks like a chance for them to gain some&nbsp;<strong>brownie points<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n<p>Many tweet about the&nbsp;<strong>career options women have<\/strong>&nbsp;in their industry:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image  caption-style-blue-overlay caption-alignment-center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-international-stateless\/2020\/03\/2fc8869c-chevron-omv-total-exxon-genderwashing-tweets-828x1024.jpg\" alt=\"screenshot of genderwashing tweets from Chevron, OMV, Total, Exxon for International Women's Day\" class=\"wp-image-29098\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<p>Or they focus on the&nbsp;<strong>gender gap<\/strong>&nbsp;in research and technology:<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image  caption-style-blue-overlay caption-alignment-center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-international-stateless\/2020\/03\/90b8156c-shell-genderwashing-website-page-1024x540.jpg\" alt=\"screenshot showing a page from Shell's official website dedicated to &quot;closing the gender gap in engineering and technology&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-29101\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<p>Others run competitions, or sponsor&nbsp;<strong>cultural events<\/strong>&nbsp;like film launches:<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image  caption-style-blue-overlay caption-alignment-center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-international-stateless\/2020\/03\/61b098f5-iberdrola-and-total-genderashing-tweets-1024x645.jpg\" alt=\"screenshot of two tweets from Total and Iberdola organizing competitions, or sponsor cultural events like film launches for International Women's Day\" class=\"wp-image-29100\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<p><strong>Fossil fuel companies have for years tried \u2018greenwashing\u2019<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2013 presenting themselves as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org.uk\/news\/bp-new-ceo-bernard-looney-climate-change\/\">concerned about the environment<\/a>, saying&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/unearthed.greenpeace.org\/2016\/03\/11\/greenwash-oil-and-gas-lobby-ordered-to-stop-ads-that-talk-rubbish-about-climate-change\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">fossil gas is a climate-friendly fuel<\/a>, or investing a tiny percentage of their money in renewables to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/press-release\/16502\/statoils-name-change-to-equinor-must-be-more-than-greenwashing-greenpeace\/\">pretend they are part of the energy transition<\/a>. Many of them even<strong>&nbsp;just change their logos or branding to look more \u2018green\u2019<\/strong>. So they have had some practice in appearing to care about the social impacts of their business, and now they have seen&nbsp;<strong>International Women\u2019s Day as a chance to do some \u2018genderwashing\u2019 of their brands<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n<p>But the day-to-day business of these corporations \u2013 extracting, selling and burning fossil fuels \u2013&nbsp;<strong>causes harm to women by polluting the environment<\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/28481\/oil-industry-giants-like-bp-will-push-the-planets-climate-way-past-1-5oc-of-global-heating\/\">driving climate breakdown<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>The&nbsp;<strong>extraction, transport and processing of fossil fuels has disastrous effects<\/strong>&nbsp;on the local environment. When there are&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/press-release\/19311\/bight-oil-spill-could-reach-sydney-and-be-twice-as-bad-as-deepwater-horizon\/\">spills and other accidents<\/a>, the damage is multiplied.<\/p>\n\n<p>Women are often in more precarious social or economic situations, meaning that they can&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2018\/dec\/19\/toxic-mud-swamps-fortunes-of-niger-delta-women-years-after-oil-spill\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">suffer more from the impacts of this pollution<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image  caption-style-blue-overlay caption-alignment-center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-international-stateless\/2020\/03\/f49a51b6-deepwater-articles-climate-women-impacts-1024x537.jpg\" alt=\"screenshot of two articles about women suffering more from the impacts of fossil fuel related pollution\" class=\"wp-image-29099\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<p>But as we well know, the impact of fossil fuel extraction and use goes&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/28481\/oil-industry-giants-like-bp-will-push-the-planets-climate-way-past-1-5oc-of-global-heating\/\">far beyond accidents and spills<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p>The impacts of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/27900\/climate-emergency-the-best-of-greenpeace-images-2019\/\">climate breakdown are wide-ranging<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 from droughts and heatwaves to storms and floods \u2013 and very often these harm women the most.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/women-climate-change-sexual-violence-iucn\/a-52449269\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Recent research<\/a>&nbsp;has shown that, shockingly, climate breakdown is even&nbsp;<strong>making women more vulnerable to gender-based violence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image  caption-style-blue-overlay caption-alignment-center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-international-stateless\/2020\/03\/1efdb517-bbc-and-guardian-climate-women-articles-1024x625.png\" alt=\"screenshot of two articles showing climate breakdown is making women more vulnerable to gender-based violence\" class=\"wp-image-29097\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<p>So our call to fossil fuel corporations and other climate-wrecking companies is this:<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>We don\u2019t want to see your gender-washing posts<\/strong>&nbsp;on International Women\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n\n<p>The climate emergency and environmental destruction hurt women the most.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>If you really care about women\u2019s rights, stop making them worse.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014<br><\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/s_pastorelli\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Silvia Pastorelli<\/em><\/a><em>&nbsp;is a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace\u2019s European Unit in Brussels<\/em><br><\/p>\n<div class=\"EmptyMessage\">Block content is empty. Check the block&#8217;s settings or remove it.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fossil fuel companies have for years tried \u2018greenwashing\u2019 \u2013 presenting themselves as concerned about the environment, saying fossil gas is a climate-friendly fuel, or investing a tiny percentage of their money in renewables to pretend they are part of the energy transition. Many of them even just change their logos or branding to look more \u2018green\u2019. So they have had some practice in appearing to care about the social impacts of their business, and now they have seen International Women\u2019s Day as a chance to do some \u2018genderwashing\u2019 of their brands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":3672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"[caption id=\"attachment_3672\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<img class=\"size-medium wp-image-3672\" src=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-southeastasia-stateless\/2020\/03\/73db08cc-gp0sttxaa-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Global Climate Strike in Bangkok. \u00a9 Tadchakorn  Kitchaiphon \/ Greenpeace\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/> Hundreds of young people in Bangkok stage a die-in protest in front of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment during Climate strikes in Bangkok. They carry an open letter demanding that the Thai Government declares a climate emergency, makes a commitment to completely phase-out coal and moves towards a 50% renewable energy share by 2025.[\/caption]","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[89],"p4-page-type":[16],"class_list":["post-3670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-polluters","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3670"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44929,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions\/44929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3670"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/southeastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=3670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}