Disaggregating a climate generation: gender, agency and climate education among school students in England

Abstract

Youth are often portrayed as a unified ‘climate generation’, yet this hypothesis risks obscuring crucial differences in how young people understand and engage with climate change. Drawing on a large-scale survey of secondary school students (11–14 years) in England, this paper examines how gender, including gender-diverse identities, and age correlate with climate-related emotions, attitudes, and perceived agency. Our findings show that girls report higher climate anxiety and sense of responsibility, but also greater helplessness, while boys express lower concern and greater optimism; gender-diverse students experience the most intense emotions overall. Older students are more likely to link climate action to systemic change than younger peers, who focus on individual behaviours. These disparities are not rooted in differences in knowledge but in emotional and agency constraints, revealing how structural and cultural conditions shape who is able to achieve agency. We argue that equitable climate change education requires attention to emotional labour, social identities, and the ecological conditions through which agency is achieved. By disaggregating the ‘climate generation’, this study reframes youth climate engagement as differentiated and relational, advancing debates on gender, justice, and agency in climate change education.