Energy housekeeping: intersections of gender, domestic labour and technologies

Abstract

Emerging energy technologies and tools aim to enhance peoples' understanding and control over household energy. Yet, important questions are emerging about precisely whose understanding and control such technologies benefit, and how increasingly commonplace tools may shape the gendered division of domestic labour. This article explores how smart energy technologies, and in particular energy feedback, may reproduce or further entrench the unequal distribution of household labour between men and women. Theories of social practice are used to frame ethnographic research (semi-structured interviews, card game prompts and home tours) conducted with 24 Australian households using solar photovoltaics and batteries. Evidence is provided of men interpreting energy feedback for other household members, policing other householders' energy-using practices and more broadly orchestrating patterns of energy consumption. Building on the concept of 'digital housekeeping', which refers to the gendered way in which domestic technologies are used and maintained, the paper suggests these practices constitute gendered forms of 'energy housekeeping'. The energy housekeeping concept provides a means of understanding how emerging energy technologies and tools intersect with issues of gender and domestic labour. 555 Martin Buildings and Cities

The gendering of energy household labour

“…In this transitional period households are installing new smart energy technologies and systems, such as heat pumps and solar energy systems (De Wilde 2021), which require new skills and practices. Departing from Tolmie et al's (2007) concept of digital housekeeping, Martin's (2022) definition of energy housekeeping is used as a more appropriate term for referring to practices of control, maintenance, interpretation and orchestrating of energy at home. The present paper refers to these emerging energy-related practices as energy household labour.…”