How Women write about Nature

Researchers have learned more about how who we are influences how we write about nature; the same demographic factors likely influence thinking more generally.  A Langer lead team found that “female authors tend to use more species names when they write. . . . The researchers . . . explain how factors such as the author’s gender, place of residence or age influence the importance given to nature in their works. . . . [the researchers] found that, on average, works written by women contained more biodiversity than those written by men across all the periods analysed. . . . the researchers found more occurrences of nature in the works of North American authors than in European works. In addition, writers from smaller towns tended to describe more biodiversity in their work than those living in larger cities. . . . on average, young authors under 25 and older authors over 70 wrote about plants and animals more often than middle-aged authors.”

“Female Authors Tend to Use More Species Names When They Write.”  2023. Press release, Universitat Leipzig, https://www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetail/artikel/female-authors-tend-to-use-more-species-names-when-they-write-2023-11-13