Energy, emerging technologies and gender in homes

Abstract

This special issue explores a key question in the energy transition: how are visions, relationships and practices with emerging technologies gendered, and what does this mean for home relations and energy outcomes? Homes are deeply gendered spaces where labour, care, technology management and household responsibilities are unequally distributed. Yet, as the papers in this special issue reveal, policy and industry visions tend to overlook gendered dynamics associated with these technologies, reflecting a perceived technology neutrality. This oversight puts the energy transition at risk. This special issue reveals how understanding the gender impacts of emerging technologies is crucial for realising energy policy, regulatory and building efficiency aspirations. The collection identifies how technology use, energy consumption and everyday practices in homes reflect gendered differences. Studies from diverse empirical and geographical contexts explore questions of gender in relation to emerging technologies such as energy feedback portals, smart home systems, home efficiency improvements, electric vehicles, solar photovoltaic panels and home batteries. Recommendations are provided for policymakers, and house, technology and program designers, to achieve an equitable energy transition. The collection demonstrates the need for concerted policy and industry attention to gendered dynamics in order to ensure inclusive energy policy and technology development.

Interim report of the JUSTHEAT project: a social and cultural history of home heating

“…Thus, although women have experienced a degree of reduction in domestic labour due to increasingly automated heating systems, this has come at the expense of a centralisation of knowledge and responsibilityand thus powerover home heating to men. There are examples, within the oral histories, of how women rely on the knowledge, technical skill, and benevolence of a man to achieve thermal comfort in their own homes; much new heating technology depends on apps and devices that have been shown to be designed by and for men (Strengers, 2014;Strengers, 2022).…”