Why Domestic Sustainability Got it Wrong

Written by: Adam Assimakopoulos 

Edited by: Sunny Bell

Clean energy and sustainability have always troubled me. While the science is undeniable, and the ticking clock is omnipresent, the “collective push” toward sustainability has always felt nameless, faceless, and soulless. Indeed, the poster child for clean energy use feels like a distant and vague ambition. Hence, I’m not interested in itemizing daily routines by their emissions, nor will I take this as an opportunity to catalogue humanity’s extensively covered shortcomings. Instead, I attempt to humanize energy preferences at an individual level, challenging traditional narratives of overconsumption, sustainability, and the elusive “carbon footprint.”

A person or household’s energy habits are defined by their contexts, including gender, geography, and income, among others. This article evaluates how the intersection of two or more of these factors has wrongfully typified certain households as being wasteful or regressive. While I make no normative assertions about impoverished women in the Global South, I argue that the clean energy initiative ought to be reshaped. Admittedly, this article may, in trying to humanize energy preferences, inadvertently essentialize the experience of some regions or groups. I am admittedly self-conscious about this article, as it may serve to only divide the sustainability initiative, rather than unite it. At the very least, I hope to disrupt the sanitized, unimaginative ideals that have come to overwhelm sustainability projects.

Firstly, the conversation surrounding sustainability wrongfully features two troubling and incompatible tenets: the home as a unit of analysis, and objectivity. Indeed, the home is one of the most deeply gendered realms of society (Petrova, 2021, 850). While the home makes for a convenient analytical unit, the associated data is highly dismissive of its gender-based causes. Domestic labour – often carried out by women – involves cooking, cleaning, and caring for others, energy-intensive projects that become enhanced with the reproduction of traditional gender norms (Fakier, 2018, 166). Put simply, when one housemate shoulders the domestic duties of one or more housemates, there is often an urgency associated with such a volume (e.g. serving three meals per day, cleaning after each meal, preparing work uniforms for the following day etc.). Not to mention, the conventional housewife or stay-at-home mother remains at home during a period they would otherwise be working. These duties can also produce energy poverty, to be discussed in the following section. 

For instance, the role of women in rural Kenya is deeply embedded within egalitarian and cultural norms. A study conducted in 2024 finds that women spend between 2 and 5 hours per week collecting fuel (Chen, 2024, 186). This choice was found to be directly reflective of household members’ preferences, contingent on the degree of bargaining power held by the female (Chen, 2024, 186). A study conducted two years prior finds a correlation between low employment opportunities and a higher risk of energy poverty. Limited employment implies extremely younger or older household heads (Ngarava, 2022, 2). These preferences are part of a broader framework of domestic characteristics: energy poverty is positively correlated with general poverty, which is correlated with household size. These factors tend to reinforce each other. Furthermore, public services such as water and sanitation are not readily available to households in economically depressed communities. This leaves women to fill the gap by employing unsafe, ecologically destructive energy sources (Ngarava, 2022, 7). While women prefer clean alternatives, they are either limited by bargaining power or resources (Chen, 186). It should also be noted that women’s higher gas consumption is attributable to their preference for warmer temperatures, in both water and heat (Elnakat & Gomez, 2015, 172). This is matched by women’s higher preference for sustainable energy conservation, as compared with men’s (Elnakat & Gomez, 2015, 170). Comparatively, in Europe, it was found that single men consume more energy than the average single woman; this is explained by the level of expenditure within a given household (Raty, 2010, 647). 

Importantly, the domestic role of women in the Global South represents a critical intersection of gender, poverty, and often colonialism. While I am deeply attentive to the harmful discourse on ecofeminism that structurally links the oppression of women and nature, I use women’s energy habits to reject the narrative of Africa as a distinct site of economic opportunity (Phillips, 2016, 4). Indeed, Western markets have long set their sights on the region as a lucrative market for energy innovations and economic opportunity (Ngarava, 2022, 7). These attempts reflect a colonial imperative to “improve” the African continent under the auspices of gender equality or economic opportunity (Archibong, 2023, 5). The transnational sustainability project seeks to achieve both simultaneously. These objectives look good on paper, though they are filtered through private corporations. For-profit energy-efficient infrastructure promises to relieve low-income homemakers of their “backwards and unequal” domestic undertakings. These efforts bypass women’s voices and wedge family dynamics into an industrial framework, rather than the inverse (Archibong, 2023, 5; Fakier, 2018, 166).

From these findings, we can conclude that households’ energy preferences are not reflected in their consumption. More importantly, top-down sustainable energy infrastructure cannot viably solve any of the consumption issues outlined by survey respondents.

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References:

Archibong, E. I., & Afolabi, A. P. (2023). From colonial exploitation to renewable transition: A critical analysis of Africa's energy paradigm. European Journal of Sustainable Development Research, 7(4), 0236. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejosdr/13635.

Chen, J., Liao, H., & Zhang, T. (2024). Empowering women substantially accelerates the household clean energy transition in China. Energy Policy, 187, 114048. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114048.

Elnakat, A. & Gomez, J.D. (2015). Energy engenderment: An industrialized perspective assessing the importance of engaging women in residential energy consumption management. Energy Policy, 82.

Fakier, Khayaat (2018) Women and Renewable Energy in a South African Community: Exploring Energy Poverty and Environmental Racism. Journal of International Women's Studies, 19. Iss. 5. Article 11. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol19/iss5/11. 

Ngarava, S., Zhou, L., Ningi, T., Chari, M.M., & Mdiya, L. (2022). Gender and ethnic disparities in energy poverty: The case of South Africa. Energy Policy, 61.

Petrova, S., & Simcock, N. (2019). Gender and energy: domestic inequities reconsidered. Social & Cultural Geography, 22 (6), 849–867. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1645200.

Phillips, M., & Rumens, N. (Eds.). (2016). Contemporary Perspectives on Ecofeminism (1st ed.). Routledge.

Räty, R., & Carlsson-Kanyama, A. (2010). Energy consumption by gender in some European countries. Energy Policy, 38 (1), 646-649.