I recently heard an airline employee claim that “over 95%” of passengers with emotional support animals are women.
Googling hasn’t produced anything useful to affirm or deny this - so I turn to the expertise of SDMB.
I’m not aware of any official registry, or even a central agency regulating them, so I don’t know where the data would come from …
any such data is most likely anecdotal, but it wouldn’t shock me if the numbers were 80%+
In my extensive experience working with the public, although I have heard stories of men with ESA’s, I have never seen one. I have encountered dozens of women with them.
My understanding is under federal law it is illegal for any agency, Federal or State, to regulate the industry.
There’s a Federal regulation stating that Federal regulation is illegal? Was it written by Bertrand Russell?
(Ok, don’t spoil the joke, I know that “law” and “regulation” are not synonymous.)
My understanding is that the regulation only applies to service animals which are different than emotional support animals. Service animals are trained to perform a certain function for the disabled person whereas the emotional support animals are just there to provide comfort.
There are only two significant federal laws relating to Emotional Support Animals - Fair Housing Act and Air Carrier Access Act. Which means you can have your Support Animal in your home, and on a plane. Beyond that there are few real protections for taking a support animal anywhere. This is in contrast to Service Animals which are covered under the ADA and can pretty much go with you anywhere, which a few exceptions.
So are we concluding that there is no way to accurately answer this with a factual answer, and any answer would rely on anecdotal opinions?
It seems that the way to get at a factual answer would be to ask airlines if they keep records of the genders of passengers who board with emotional support animals.
Airlines are permitted to require evidence that the emotional service animal is actually required for medical reasons, and not just a pet. From the DOT website:
This is different and much more stringent than the requirements for a service animal for a passenger with a disability:
Given the number of online services selling medical letters for ESAs, I doubt the “much more stringent” part.
Anecdotal observations may be worth more than anecdotal opinions. We fly a few times a year, and my gf goes out of her way to be kind/reassuring to individuals with emotional support animals. Out of dozens of such encounters, not one person has been a guy.
The airlines would certainly track the passengers that take animals on the plane. They could thus easily track the gender of each owner or simply make an educated guess by the name, though some like Chris could be either or you could have a female with a male name or vice versa.
Since the OP stated “Passengers” this stat would be reasonable though it would only apply to passengers and now owners at large.
Or Pat.
Or Kit.
Ok, Pat was much funnier.
Since emotional support animals are essentially pets, we could look to data on pet ownership. 
Among the folk I regularly encounter who call their pets support animals (or even service dogs - they tend to be pretty casual in the terms they use, and rarely have any documentation of their need or the animal’s training/qualifications), I’d estimate that women might SLIGHTLY outnumber men, but nowhere near 95%. More like 60/40.
Multiple studies show that women are more likely to seek psychological treatment than men (one example is here.) If more women than men seek out mental health services, it shouldn’t be surprising that more women than men are recommended emotional support animals.
I used to work in this area of the law. Although I didn’t keep stats on gender, my anecdotal observation was that complainants with emotional support animals were more like 60/40 female to male.
Interestingly, some studies show that men are more likely to experience depression but less likely to take antidepressants: Are men under-treated and women over-treated with antidepressants? Findings from a cross-sectional survey in Sweden - PMC
This also jibes with my anecdotal experiences of men’s and women’s respective willingness to see a doctor for any kind of health problem, not just mental health.
Yes, isn’t one of the main points of the “toxic masculinity” concept the idea that men are socialized to believe (or at least act as if) only weak losers require “emotional support”?
The notion of needing an emotional support animal to handle ordinary activities like traveling on airplanes has connotations of personal fragility that I would think most men would shy away from. (Not suggesting that flight anxiety isn’t a real thing or that those who suffer from it are inferior or “fragile” in reality, just that our cultural stereotypes incline us to think so.)
So I would be very surprised if the vast majority of people who are willing to admit to needing an emotional support animal weren’t women, because that kind of admission is fairly taboo for men in our society. Men can have emotional support alcohol but not emotional support animals.
No one is recommended an emotional support animal, because the concept is totally bogus. When a person has an emotional support animal, it’s because they’ve asked their doctor or therapist for a letter.
No one needs an emotional support animal to fly on an airplane. The idea that this is an appropriate way to manage situational anxiety has no valid basis in psychology or psychiatry. Most people doing this just want to take their pet on vacation without putting poor pwecious in the cargo hold.