The burden of going "green" to fall on women?

[Annasgirl]

I was reading a newspaper article this morning about the new zero waste eco warriors and as I read about what we all need to do I realised, as I have before, that the burden will fall on women.

Now before you all chime in and say well your problem is your DH, etc etc, surveys throughout the world have found that women do 75% of housework and think of all the wife work we all do. SO, bearing in mind we are not going to turn around the oil tanker that is the patriarchy in the next 30 years, all of the adapting to old technology and extra work that involves will fall to women and hands on men.

And as I thought more about it I realised that being a zero waste family would be difficult to achieve if you were a dual working outside the home family or a working single parent since a lot of the stuff involves added work for the person.

Now I'm not saying we should not do it, but all the worthies have ignored the fact that women will end up doing most of the heavy lifting on this - what do you all think?

I agree. Yes, it's necessary, but as bloody usual it is one sex that will be putting the extra work in.
Although some of it can be NOT doing work, like washing things less often and not ironing because it's a waste of electricity, I guess.

That is probably true of many households but in mine I lead on the plastic, DH leads on the carbon emissions. We are both Green Party members and active in our local party.

Unfortunately the burden of research falls more on me as there are more products that that fall into my remit and I use more due to skincare and make up.

I agree.
I’ve switched to reusable sanitary product, now get bamboo toilet paper in paper packaging and try to buy organic fruit and veg without packaging, found palm oil free soap.

DH carries on like he’s the only person who gives a fuck and he’s done bugger all.

Totaly agree. When I saw we were getting yet another recyling bin i thought hmm more work for me. If some reports are to be believed it all ends up in landfill anyway...

Yes I recycle as much as possible and take a keep cup (glass) with me to get coffee etc. But the more I read the more I think all of my recycled plastic ends up in the ocean!!!!

Agreed. I cloth nappy, shop second hand clothes and toys to reduce waste, breastfeed etc. it is all more unpaid domestic labour which no one really notices.

However, the planet is heating up and we won't last the 150 years we need to achieve equal pay etc if we destroy it....so there is that.

IN rare moments of optimism, I think that the post carbon world will be so much better for women. we need to deprecate the getting of stuff and end capitalism, so perhaps the new world order will have new values and the patriarchy ends with the capitalism it created

I am basically a pessimist

I think women feel more guilt, fear and stress about our dying world. So we are the ones driven to make change.

Totally agree - we cannot achieve anything without tackling this on a corporate and government level, but instead we focus on individual changes at large personal cost because the added labour is invisibilised because women do it.

Agreed, my oh is very keen but I'm the person washing the plastic before putting it in the recycling bin and the person who take the glass to the recycling point. And when we tried just having one car for a few years the burden of managing fell entirely on me which ultimately made it impossible.

You never see men having frenzied discussions about the respective merits of terry cloth nappies vs pocket nappies

I have seen 4 or 5 items in the last month pop up on my FB feed, all about the evils of tampons

Never, like, how pointless men's shaving foam is or anything.

Yes, I’ve often thought this. Whenever someone criticises fast fashion, for instance, and the response is “well it’s the consumer’s fault for buying cheap clothes” it’s just a sly way of blaming women, who are often tasked with buying clothes for the whole family. Meanwhile men are in charge of the factories and the supply chain but they somehow escape blame.

Yep, I think women do most of the heavy lifting, no question.

But I do also think women consume far more.
In my bathroom, I have shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, hair product, two different moisturisers, spot cream, and coconut oil.
My partner has shower gel and shampoo.
I own a lot more clothes than him, and most women I know own even more than me.
I don't wear makeup much, but that would skew it even more.

Whether either of us choose to buy recycled loo roll or ecover washing up liquid, or who washes up the yoghurt pots, ends up being rather insignificant.

I don’t think we’ll get anywhere with climate change until environmental issues are wrested from modern liberals. Deficit spending increases consumption. Immigration increases the carbon footprint from a poorer country of origin to match that of the country of destination. Redistribution of wealth policies also drives up consumption.

I wouldn’t trust the right with it either as the world’s respective militaries and military industrial complexes are the single biggest contributors to pollution.

As with regards to feminism I think it might actually be one of the greenest ideologies out there as by promoting equal access to education and women having reproductive rights does drive down the number of births, and probably the least green thing you can do is make more people.

Also we should be wary of marketing as companies will sell you a thing because they can market it as good for the environment. I recall those little widgets you were supposed to put in washing machines to make them more environmentally friendly. Once you take into account their manufacture in China and the carbon footprint to ship them here you’d need to use one for hundreds if not thousands of washes to pay its carbon debt.

We should get over our squeamishness over nuclear energy it’s probably our best bet at this point. Also in addition to the military point I raised above if the USA had thrown its weight behind thorium instead of plutonium/uranium nuclear energy it would have likely attained complete energy independence within the last 20 years. The reason they didn’t is that it is far easier to weaponise the byproducts of plutonium/uranium reactors into weapons programs relative to thorium.

If I were you I’d be cautious of pressures placed on women exclusively when there are far bigger ticket items we could be looking at first.

I struggle with all this - the great gods of consumption and convenience are also associated with good outcomes such as freedom, independence, education and equality of opportunity. Especially, often, for women.

Even a simple thing like children’s art materials is a huge ‘waste’. But the education benefits are immeasurable.

(Notwithstanding that I did take the breastfeeding, cloth-nappying, no pouches route of parenting!)

Remember that Gilead claimed to be reducing carbon? Yes, it would do - half the population was no longer reading, working or freely associating.

the worthies have ignored the fact that women will end up doing most of the heavy lifting on this

I agree, and I think its typical that womens lives are invisible to men, because it suits them to have things this way. Recycling, mending, making do and going without are not glamorous. Its what our grandmothers had to do out of necessity.

I don’t think that’s entirely fair I think the majority of my grandparents generation were masters of fixing rather than replacing wether they were men or women.

One of my bugbears in the marketplace these days is planned obsolescence, whereby things are now engineered to fail after increasingly shorter timespans.

Even if you are a woman and you don’t faff with all the recycling and living green stuff you are probably living a greener life just pursuing your own liberties than you would if your role was just to be a wife and mother (and having more children rather than getting to choose yourself).

It’s pretty well known in marketing you can play on female guilt to influence behaviour, I think it’s worth analysing why that might be...

I'm not so sure. I think that it's probably going to affect everyone pretty equally and if I'm honest, brutally. Women may end up with the bulk of the home related work but men may end up with some pretty significant physical labour that's not so common now in industrialised countries.

I do wonder if homemaking may become more of a real job, again.

Yes I think this is a real sticking point for change- many of us need dual incomes to survive but who then has time and energy to do all the green living stuff?

Wow, - even more stuff to consider here!!

I'm in Ireland and we just had a big plan published by our government yesterday with the changes which will need to take place. Most seem to be to get us to change to EV's. SO they will make it impossible to afford other cars. Now, all good in theory but most people cannot afford a new car so the poor, as ever, will end up paying more for this change. Also, poorer or relatively poorer people will end up being the worst off in this radical change - they will have to do more manual work etc but there will be no direct financial gain to them.

I agree, it will need way more radical change than is envisioned - or perhaps than is palatable to big business at the moment. I mean our government has effectively said that in 10 years there will be no need for gas / petrol / diesel service stations - I cannot imagine big oil taking this change lightly. And that is only the easy slam dunk stuff, what about the stuff that will be harder to manage, like you all alluded to, less time in work and more at home if we need to grow our own food, recycle, mend etc etc.

Up to now the green way of life has been an indulgence of eccentric middle class people (where I live). These people have trust funds or other income so they do not work the same hours as you and I in the mainstream. How are governments going to manage this change coupled with the need for 2 people to work or even the want of 2 people to work outside the home in a couple?

I also believe that the release of women into the workplace has been a double edged sword - yo now need 2 incomes to afford to buy or rent a home. But women gained freedom and financial independence.

Its funny but I don't think there are many men musing on how these changes will affect their home life. But they are annoyed about the cars........

They’re debating similar with electric vehicles here (jersey). By 2025 apparently everyone will have an EV. BEcause from 2020 they’re going to stop selling petrol and diesel cars. ANd will tax diesel and petrol to a ridiculous amount to force people to make the switch.

No incentive to make the switch though. As in no free installation of charge points at home or additional charge points out and about.

Our car is 10 years old. It’s done us well. We’ll use it until we have to replace it. Dh is considering an EV or a hybrid.

The rest of the “green/eco” stuff does fall down to me. He’ll get on board with it (apart from the garden and growing veggies that’s all his domain) but if changes are to be made I need to make and implement them.

Which was ok until I realised that’s what I’m doing and he’s not.

Green Austerity is the gift that keeps on giving.

As long as people think that the planet can be saved by modifying their consumption, recycling and switching to green energy tariffs, they will be happy to pay for the Green Revolution in the UK.

They won't be so keen when governments use the tax and benefit system to limit their freedom - for instance, to decide for themselves how many children they bring into the world. The talk of limiting the size of families is a controversial one, with echoes of 20th century China, so you will rarely hear it discussed openly outside the Green Party.

While the UK might try to pat itself on the back for reaching zero carbon targets, it is simply displacing its carbon emissions. Manufacturing and some farming may disappear from the UK - but we will still import other countries carbon emissions (meat, consumer goods, air miles). Which defeats the point of the whole exercise.

Totally. I get so irritated by all the tv programmed and morning breakfast shows guilt tripping women into shopping better.
Whereas the (always) male politicians and corporations owners who could make big changes are just allowed to carry on

People who think switching to all electric vehicles will work are fooling themselves IMO. It may well be that the vehicles we have will be electric, but people are going to have to give up many or most personal vehicles, at least in cities, and drive less everywhere.

Which will mean living close to their work and working at home. I think there will be a huge shift in the way we deal with work that will be larger than the scale of women moving into the workplace. Home costs and such will likely be all over the place. I would not be at all surprised to see the two-income family as we know it totally changed.

I agree completely, @Goosefoot.
Within the next 100 years no one will own cars. All cars will be automated and you will simply order the one you need. It’ll turn up at the allotted time and take you to where you need to go.