Women's participation and technological innovation have a crucial role in ensuring environmental sustainability in the long-run. However, the nature of this relationship has diverse opinions across the continuum. The present study focuses on the empirical relevance of this debate based on the theoretical underpinnings of ecofeminism and techno-centrism, using panel data on 37 OECD countries for the period 1990-2019. Employing the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) approach, the study constructs two models, based on ecofeminism and techno-centrism, respectively, and finds that both have a negative and significant impact on environmental degradation measured by the ecological footprint. The results suggest that equality of women in the labour markets and technological innovation through R&D expenditure are both viable developmental tools for ensuring environmental sustainability. Moreover, the empirical estimation also confirms the existence of an N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve between economic growth and environmental degradation in the case of selected OECD countries in both ecofeminist and techno-centric models.
Keywords: Ecological footprint; Environmental Kuznets curve; Environmental policy; Gender; Sustainable development.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.