When oil meets the environment

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of the Gender Working Group features a paper presentation by EUI Researcher Paloma Abril Poncela.

This paper examines when and why men and women vote differently on environmental matters, seeking to identify the determinants of the environmental gender gap. While research has documented gender differences in environmental attitudes, less is known about how these translate into actual voting behavior, particularly in contexts shaped by resource dependence. We address this gap through the case of Ecuador's 2023 national referendum, which asked voters whether to halt oil extraction in Yasuni National Park, a highly productive yet protected area of the Amazon. Using official electoral data, where voting booths are segregated by gender, and applying linear regression models and two-way fixed effects estimations, the authors find that in areas without oil extraction, women were significantly more likely than men to support halting extraction. However, this gender gap disappears in extractive regions, where both men and women show higher support for continued extraction. Further analysis confirms that the stronger the local presence of oil industries, the greater the overall opposition to halting extraction, but that this opposition does not differ by gender. To deepen these findings, the authors propose a follow-up survey in Ecuador that will explore why the gender gap exists in non-oil regions but not in oil-producing ones. The survey will test two sets of hypotheses: one centered on material incentives and another on environmental motivations, to better understand how local and individual economic contexts shape gendered environmental preferences.

Co-authored: EUI Researchers Sara Dybesland and Deniz Tufur.

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