Gender, Climate Change and Consumption

Consumption levels and patterns are one of the primary drivers of climate change. The human behaviours that are most responsible for causing GHG emissions are energy consumption, transport, (industrial) agriculture, and the destruction of forests and other land-use change for various human purposes. In turn, climate change will increasingly impact human consumption, for example via increased energy needs, necessary changes in infrastructure construction, and rising commodity prices.

Consumption patterns differ significantly between the Global North and the Global South. In the South, questions of survival and poverty are the main focus, whereas in the North, an expanding consumer culture is evident. The production, processing, packaging and transport of food are a major source of carbon emissions. Meat production alone accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gases, according to FAO data, and the overconsumption of meat is a common pattern in the consumerist lifestyles of rich nations. Other main areas of concern include housing, household and other electrical appliances, clothing and leisure-time consumption, including car use and tourism.

In the North, environmental degradation can generally be linked to over-consumption; whereas in the South, poverty narrows the range of behavioural choices available to people and often leads to environmentally degrading behaviour patterns.

Gender Dimensions

Consumption and lifestyle patterns differ between women and men. This holds true for poor and rich countries and regions alike. Two major factors contribute to this: the gender division of labor and women's access to resources and material wealth. Because women tend to work closer to the home, they have fewer travel expenditures. Having smaller incomes and less leisure time than men due to caregiving responsibilities, women generally consume less in comparison to men in the same geographical and social location.

Nonetheless, women play active roles in the daily consumption cycle – choosing, buying, using and disposing – both for themselves and for others. Buying is often the most prevalent of these activities, because women are responsible for most of the shopping. However, that does not necessarily mean that women use what they buy. On the contrary, as the family managers, they often buy what suits their husband and their children rather than themselves.

As well as differences between women and men as to the amount of goods and services purchased, women also have a greater tendency to make sustainable consumption choices, e.g. eating less meat, or a showing preference for organic food. There is also strong evidence that women place greater emphasis on the crucial role of behaviour and lifestyle changes in combatting climate change, whereas men tend to rely more on technological solutions.

In empirical studies on environmental awareness and behaviour in industrialised countries, clear gender differences have been detected repeatedly: women tend to have a higher level of environmental awareness than men (repeatedly shown for Germany, and also other OECD countries such as Finland and Japan); women show a higher engagement with environmental issues and a greater willingness to act to preserve the environment; women are more sceptical regarding new technologies and their potential impacts and risks; and women act in a more environmentally friendly manner (shown for Germany, Finland, Sweden), e.g. they buy more environmentally sound products; they eat less meat; and their mobility behaviour is less environmentally harmful because they drive cars less often, walk more and use public transport more often than men.

Response

Studies have shown that men and women consume differently, and these differences are based on a division of tasks, rights and responsibilities along gendered lines. To gain a more accurate picture of household consumption it is necessary to understand the differences in more detail: who does what work, who makes what decisions, who uses resources for what purposes, who controls resources, and who is responsible for different family obligations.

To gain a more complete and realistic picture with respect to sustainable consumption, it is important to integrate a gender perspective into further research:

• Generating gender-disaggregated databases, gender-sensitive indicators and country-based analyses
• Conducting gender-specific surveys about  environmental motivation and behaviour in more detail and in different areas
• Examining which factors contribute to consumer awareness and behaviour;
  Supporting the development of gender-sensitive strategies for sustainable consumption in order not to increase women’s workload; and
• Conducting research on the consumption patterns of female-headed households (since the number of these households is growing) and compare lifestyles to the traditional nuclear or other forms of families.