When an environmental threat affects a community’s health, most often it is women who take on these issues.  Frequently they do so in isolation, far from established conservation groups and with few resources.

Women’s Voices for the Earth supports community-based women through mentorship, leadership trainings, networking, and linking them with technical and legal assistance - magnifying their voices into coordinated campaigns that change the policies that allow environmental degradation to occur.

WVE focuses attention on the environmental issues directly affecting women because while harm to our natural environment affects all of us, women and children carry these health impacts in a unique way.  Furthermore, women possess important social and political potential to influence environmental policy-making.

Environmental Impacts on Women

Most chemicals used today have never been tested for their risks to human health.  Of those that have been tested, most have been evaluated for their acute impacts to adult males. The impact of toxic chemicals on women is of particular concern for a number of reasons. First, women are the first environment for the next generation. Many chemicals stored in a woman’s body are passed onto her child during pregnancy and later through breast-feeding. A 2005 study by the Environmental Working Group revealed that at least 287 hazardous industrial chemicals pass through the placenta to the fetus. Synthetic chemicals are so prevalent in a woman's breast milk today that, if bottled for sale, most breast milk would not pass FDA regulations. While studies still document that breastfeeding remains the best option for building infant immunity, the quantity of chemicals to which we are exposing our young is of grave concern and poses an unnecessary burden on the developing child.

Second, many chemicals accumulate in fat and women generally have a higher percentage of fat tissue than men. For example, in 2003, the Centers for Disease Control reported that women, as compared to men, had significantly higher levels of ten of the 116 toxic chemicals they tested.  Three of the ten chemicals were phthalates – a group of chemicals found commonly in health and beauty products that are linked to birth defects.  Only one chemical tested—lead--was found in higher levels in men. We are also seeing an increase in women’s health problems related to environmental exposure. Over the last two decades, breast cancer rates have risen from a lifetime risk of one in 20 to one in seven.

Furthermore, minority racial populations of women bear a greater burden of chronic diseases in the United States that have been linked with exposure to toxic chemicals. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the incidence of cervical cancer is more than five times greater among Vietnamese women in the United States than among white women. The CDC also reports that African American women are more likely to die of breast cancer than are women of any other racial or ethnic group. And African American, American Indian, and Puerto Rican infants have higher death rates than white infants. In 1998, the death rate among African American infants was 2.3 times greater than that among white infants.

Women Influencing Environmental Policy

When surveyed, women consistently rate the environment as one of their greatest concerns – in numbers greater than men.   Focus group data gathered in Seattle in 2002 indicate that women are more concerned about dangers posed by toxic chemicals than are men.  Nationwide polling shows that women feel this concern regardless of their political party affiliation; a majority of both Democratic and Republican women described themselves as very concerned about chemical pollution in our environment.  Generally, women also remain the primary providers of healthcare oversight for their families.  A poll conducted by the federal Office of Women’s Health found that nearly two-thirds of women indicated they alone were responsible for health care decisions for their family, and 83% had sole or shared responsibility for financial decisions regarding their family’s health. We know that these are issues that interest, concern, and motivate women.  Yet, a report from the United Nations states that women still remain largely absent from the decision-making structure on natural resource management, conservation, and environmental protection.  There is tremendous untapped potential for advocacy and political influence within this constituency which WVE has sought to harness.