Why women oppose nuclear power more than men?

[Joku]

I have been wondering what is causing this. At least here in Finland, whenever there is a poll, larger percentage in women opposes building more nuclear plants. Same thing happens when the question is whether or not Finland should join NATO. So what do you think is causing this? Could it be that women are more prone to emotional thinking than men?

[mr_sir]

I think women just think about things more than men and so see the consequences of such things more. Men, at least in my opinion, tend to rush into stuff more and go on the spur of the moment more. Mind you, nuclear power is something that, from what I have witnessed, is largely misunderstood by the general majority of the public so emotions probably do come into it too. I grew up near a nuclear power plant, and my Dad has worked there for the last 25 years and used to take me on tours of the place when he managed part of the plant so I've never had any fears about safety etc. when it comes to nuclear power but I know that a lot of people do worry about it purely from hear say and media hype. Women tend to read magazines etc. more than men so maybe this influences things a bit too.

[Xandax]

Let me devle far into a steroptype here It could be a logical vs. emotional reason.

Logically - Nuclear power is a good way to get energy. It is much better in many aspect then what we use today: more clean and more cheap etc.
However emotionally - it is also dangerous if accidents happen. Many of us remember the Chernobyl disaster, and it was/is scary indeed.

It could be such reasons which - on a larger scale - explain the results mentioned in the first post.... But I'll wait for CE to come along with her knowlegde before using my speculations to make my mind up

[dragon wench]

There have been some well known situations where women are indeed vocal about their objection to nuclear power ([url="http://www.greenhamwpc.org.uk/"]The Women of Greenham Common[/url] spring to mind), and in addition women have long been perceived as more antiwar.

I really don't know here,and I haven't seen statistics in this area, but I dislike the stereotype of "emotional women" vs. "rational men," regardless of where it is applied.

What I find interesting, and my apologies if this is too far off track, is that men are also stereotyped as more violent than women. Yet... from what I understand... violence is actually associated with emotion rather than reason.

[Lestat]

Rather than emotional & rational, I'd go for "risk averse" for women and "willing/eager to take risks" for men (though those are generalisations of course). Similar in microfinance: men are more prone to squander the money on a big plan, while women take less risks or more sensible ones. So you observe a higher success rates with micro-loans to women.

[C Elegans]

[QUOTE=Xandax]But I'll wait for CE to come along with her knowlegde before using my speculations to make my mind up [/QUOTE]

Heh unfortunately I can't offer much knowledge since it's not really known why and besides, I am really fed up with all the male-female polarisation discussions since individual differences are far larger than gender differences. There have been numerous threads here at SYM about gender differences, and I just can't understand why the particular groups "male-female" are so intersting, when other divisions like "old-young", "extrovert-introvert" or "high education-low education" differentiate people far more in terms of almost all kind of behaviour, life style, values and attitudes.

Anyway, what I know in short is:

Poll data and sociological investigations in Western culture systematically show that men and young people are more negative to war and violent conflict in general than men and older people. Women and young people also care more about environmental issues, and this is most likely the reason why they also are more against nuclear power. Women and young people are also more positive to paying tax, more negative to privatisation of governmental services and more negative to globalisation.

The documented differences cannot be entirely due to biological differences, since the differences have changed a lot over the last 30 years. At least in Sweden, the changes are lineraly correlated to increasing gender equality in society, so there is support for the hypothesis that these political attitudes and values are related to gender roles.

Again, nobody knows exactly why women's political values differ somewhat from mens' at group level, but the general consensus among sociologists etc is that the traditional female gender role is more associated with caring about the social issues than the traditional male gender role.

So, rational-irrational does not seem to play a role in these gender differences. Females are highly irrational, but unfortunately, males are equally irrational. This has been studied in social psychology, and the conclusion is sadly that the vast majority of people are irrational and base their values, life choices and opinions on emotional arguments, not rational ones.

[fable]

[QUOTE=Lestat]Rather than emotional & rational, I'd go for "risk averse" for women and "willing/eager to take risks" for men (though those are generalisations of course). Similar in microfinance: men are more prone to squander the money on a big plan, while women take less risks or more sensible ones. So you observe a higher success rates with micro-loans to women.[/QUOTE]

I'd add to Lestat's analysis that if you bring children up in a culture where men are inclined to be the risk-takers and women aren't, you are going to see exactly this sort of difference on polls. I would be most curious to find out, not the percentage of men vs women who favor nuclear plant technology, but urban vs rural.

[C Elegans]

[QUOTE=fable]I'd add to Lestat's analysis that if you bring children up in a culture where men are inclined to be the risk-takers and women aren't, you are going to see exactly this sort of difference on polls. I would be most curious to find out, not the percentage of men vs women who favor nuclear plant technology, but urban vs rural.[/QUOTE]

And to add to the discussion about risk-taking behaviour, it is shown over and over again in various paradigms that males show more risk-taking behaviour and have more risk-taking behaviours than females. However, an interesting observations is that in Sweden, the most gender equal country in the world according to objective measurements, the group in society that has shown most risk-taking traits over the last 10 years or so, is young women between age 18-25.

[mr_sir]

[QUOTE=Lestat]Rather than emotional & rational, I'd go for "risk averse" for women and "willing/eager to take risks" for men (though those are generalisations of course). Similar in microfinance: men are more prone to squander the money on a big plan, while women take less risks or more sensible ones. So you observe a higher success rates with micro-loans to women.[/QUOTE]

Thats the kind of thing I was meaning when I said that women tend to think about things a bit more than men and don't rush into stuff as much. I was struggling to work out how to explain it but your paragraph sums it up perfectly