Evidence for an association between women and nature: An analysis of media images and mental representations

Abstract

The existence of an association between women and nature has been a longstanding claim of scholars from many disciplines. However, psychological evidence for this association has been lacking. This article presents evidence of the woman-nature association in everyday media representations and in laypeople's conscious beliefs. Study 1 demonstrates the association through a content analysis of images sampled from two popular search engines. Study 2 demonstrates it by directly asking people about the associations they hold between gender and nature, and clarifies their attitudes toward these associations. Findings from both studies indicate that women are indeed more associated with nature than..