Are Gender Perspectives Included in Education for Sustainable Consumption and Waste Education Programs? A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Education for sustainable consumption (ESC) has a role in the provision of knowledge, values, and skills to enable individuals and social groups to become actors of change towards more sustainable lifestyles. Also, it must consider the interests, needs, and perspective of critical stakeholders, empower them and enable their full participation in public debates about sustainability. Though unsustainable consumption is substantially shaped by gender-based inequalities, ESC itself tends to be gender-neutral. This study provides a systematic literature review of research on ESC, with a focus on waste education, and an assessment of the inclusion of gender perspectives in those publications. A structured tool Proknown-C was applied and 46 articles were retrieved and analyzed-28 generally related to ESC and 18 to waste education in particular. The articles were published intermittently between 1990 and 2017, with case studies on 32 countries. From the aggregate number of articles, 22 addressed gender in some form, however, in its majority, it was limited to superficial mentions and to the presentation of the study subjects in a sex-disaggregated manner, with fewer exploring gender and its relationships with ESC and waste education. This study offers a contribution to the scholarly and practical debate on ESC and waste education programs, and the inclusion of gender perspectives, as well as, kindle in-depth research on the subjects. It also aims to provide points for better understanding the role of gender perspectives in promoting sustainable consumption practices and lifestyles.

Sustainable Consumption: Conceptualization and Characterization of the Complexity of “Being” a Sustainable Consumer—A Systematic Review of the Scientific Literature

“…[89] agrees with this by mentioning that there are at least 80 theories of behavior in different sciences of the subject (sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics). This affirmation can be sustained by knowing the enormous amount of variables that affect the sustainable behavior of subjects, among which are: gender [6,15,[90][91][92], age [6], personality [48,[93][94][95][96], income [83,92,[97][98][99], access to information and analytical skills [2,38,82,100], family [54,101], society and its agents [55,56,79,81,102,103], technology and digital opinion [87,104], values [83], culture [3,67,[105][106][107], marketing initiatives [48], religion [52,53], physical activity [108], or crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic [15,20,22], to mention a few. It highlights how even aspects linked to the perception of masculinity (o...…”

Food, Energy, and Water Nexus at Household Level: Do Sustainable Household Consumption Practices Promote Cleaner Environment?

“…The results are also consistent with the previous studies [30,37,44], which describe that females are more concerned about the environment than males. Dos Muchangos and Vaughter [45] reported that compared to males, females have comparatively more sustainable lifestyles. Moreover, they also stated that males' consumption patterns have larger environmental footprints than females'.…”

Socio-Cultural Determinants and the Moderating Effect of Gender in Adopting Sustainable Consumption Behavior among University Students in Iran and Japan

“…. ] while men's consumption patterns and ecological footprint are usually greater than women's" [48] (p. 164). Gender moderates the effects of predictors.…”