Gendered homes in theories of practice: A framework for research in residential energy consumption

Mechlenborg, Mette; Gram‐Hanssen, Kirsten

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2020.101538

Cited by 38 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…The literature on sustainable consumption has, for a large part, proved ill-equipped in tackling inequalities and power relationships within and outside the home, a weakness we seek to address by throwing light on the centrality of care in household consumption practices. That being said, questions of gender, inequalities and care in sustainable consumption have been gaining momentum in the last year or so, with several publications on this topic coming out in a short time span, among them the work of Fathallah and Pyakurel (2020), Hargreaves and Middlemiss (2020), Johnson (2020), Lane et al (2020), Mechlenborg and Gram-Hanssen (2020), or Gram-Hanssen (2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Care, Gender, and Change in the Study of Sustainable Consumption: A Critical Review of the Literature

Godin

Langlois

2021

Front. Sustain.

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In Western countries, moving toward more sustainable lifestyles often involves the disruption of well-established routines and habits in relation to consumption domains such as food, washing and cleaning, heating and cooling, transportation, and managing “stuff” more generally. These activities are deeply embedded in our everyday lives and often tied to care, which is the work invested in maintaining the well-being of oneself and others. In this paper, we are interested in the ways sustainable consumption and care interlock within the household, how they relate to gender inequalities, and how change toward more sustainable lifestyles can both impact and be impacted by these inequalities. With this in mind, we conducted a critical review of the academic literature by analyzing a corpus of 75 papers on household consumption and sustainability, paying particular attention to the role authors attribute to care and gender. The analysis shines light on the relational character of care and consumption, emphasizing the ways sustainable consumption is dependent on relationships within and outside the home. We suggest that care often acts as a barrier to the establishment of more sustainable consumption practice. Care work, per definition, upholds routines and habits while mobilizing the very resources that are needed to transform them. This insight invites us to rethink the role of households as a site for change. We suggest that the transition toward more sustainable consumption practices within the home relies on reducing and redistributing care work, transforming the world of work, and actively promoting an ethos of care that includes people, other beings, the material world and the planet.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Care, Gender, and Change in the Study of Sustainable Consumption: A Critical Review of the Literature

Godin

Langlois

2021

Front. Sustain.

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“…There is therefore still much room for innovations to identify the optimal ways in which the institutionalisation phases can be advanced on the other identified levels, or how the programme level's full potential can be harnessed to influence the adjacent levels (the technology and household levels) that should, in turn, have a direct positive effect on their own adjacent levels. There are certainly even more barriers to overcome in the pursuit of fair and sustainable energy access that have not been deeply explored in this study -for example, the fact that energy innovations rely heavily on policy analysis [13]. The exact implementation and transformation process could be interesting to look into in the future, as it links back to change management -another aspect that is highly complex in the context of energy security and its gendered implications.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the last couple of decades, gender has become an important theme in energy research [13]. Gender serves as a tool for understanding diversity and inequality, especially in relation to energy poverty in developing countries and sustainable transition projects [26].…”

Section: Gender In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The study of technology up to the 1980s was 'gender blind' [49] because technology was considered gender neutral. However, the establishment of feminist science, technology, and social studies questioned this perception in the 1990s [13]. Since then, technology has been increasingly seen not only as pragmatic, but also as playing a more critical role in the everyday lives of its users.…”

Section: Technology/innovations Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Understanding gender relations on a cultural level is important for the success of a sustainable transition in the energy system. Excluding knowledge of gender in the uptake of new technologies may hinder the implementation of sustainability measures [13]. A study in Pakistan found that the most significant predictors of alternative energy technology adoption included social dynamics and gender roles [43].…”

Section: Cultural Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The State of the Art of Gendered Energy Innovations: A Structured Literature Review

Merwe

Kock

Musango

2020

SAJIE

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A systematic review of peer-reviewed gender literature in sustainability science

Frank,

Mühlhaus,

Mustelin

et al. 2024

Sustain Sci

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We conducted a systematic review of the available peer-reviewed literature that specifically focuses on the combination of sustainability and gender. We analyzed the existing peer-reviewed research regarding the extent to which gender plays a role in the empirical literature, how this is methodologically collected and what understanding of gender is applied in those articles. Our aim is to provide an overview of the current most common fields of research and thus show in which areas gender is already being included in the sustainability sciences and to what extent and in which areas this inclusion has not yet taken place or has only taken place to a limited extent. We identified 1054 papers that matched our criteria and conducted research on at least one sustainable development goal and gender research. Within these papers (i), the overall number of countries where lead authors were located was very high (91 countries). While the majority of lead authors were located in the Global North, less than a third of the articles were led by authors located in the Global South. Furthermore, gender is often just used as a category of empirical analysis rather than a research focus. We were able to identify (ii) a lack in coherent framing of relevant terms. Often no definition of sustainability was given, and only the sustainability goals (SDGs or MDGs) were used as a framework to refer to sustainability. Both gender and sustainability were often used as key words without being specifically addressed. Concerning the knowledge types of sustainability, our expectation that system knowledge dominates the literature was confirmed. While a problem orientation dominates much of the discourse, only a few papers focus on normative or transformative knowledge. (iii) Furthermore, the investigated literature was mainly contributing to few SDGs, with SDG 5 ‘Gender Equality’ accounting for 83% of all contributions, followed by SDG 8 ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’ (21%), SDG 3 ‘Good Health and Well-being’ (15%) and SDG 4 ‘Quality Education’ (12%). We were additionally able to identify seven research clusters in the landscape of gender in sustainability science. (iv) A broad range of diverse methods was utilized that allow us to approximate different forms of knowledge. Yet within different research clusters, the spectrum of methodologies is rather homogeneous. (v) Overall, in most papers gender is conceptualized in binary terms. In most cases, the research is explicitly about women, running the risk that gender research in sustainability sciences grows into a synonym for women's studies.

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Gendered homes in theories of practice: A framework for research in residential energy consumption

Cited by 38 publications

References 48 publications

Care, Gender, and Change in the Study of Sustainable Consumption: A Critical Review of the Literature

Care, Gender, and Change in the Study of Sustainable Consumption: A Critical Review of the Literature

The State of the Art of Gendered Energy Innovations: A Structured Literature Review

A systematic review of peer-reviewed gender literature in sustainability science

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