Sustainability and Consumption: What's Gender Got to Do with It?

Bloodhart, Brittany; Swim, Janet K.

doi:10.1111/josi.12370

Cited by 93 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Article Identified by the Reference Number * Leadership [5,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] Consumer choices [2,10,13,[20][21][22][23] Demographic issues [19,[22][23][24][25] Social justice [2, Migration [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] Education [18,[42][43][44][45][46] Eco-activism [2,10,47] Corporate responsibility [5,13,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54] Innovation [12,58] GENERAL with no specific categorisation [6,…”

Section: Categorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Definitions of Sustainability in the Context of Gender

Odrowąż‐Coates

2021

Sustainability

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The notion of sustainability is of paramount importance for long-term survival; it is also about keeping up, moving on, and not jeopardizing the future of life on earth or the future itself. It is about tangible strategies for the reproduction and long-term existence of our own species that may be supported by the mundane everyday life practices and consumer or citizen choices that are often linked directly or indirectly to gender. Sustainable development relies on innovation and innovative social solutions. Without them, sustainability would not persist. This paper sets its research perspective within a systematic review of the literature and theory to develop a sustainability definition within the context of gender as a seed for sustainable innovation. This paper is divided into sections that cover various issues, such as: sustainability and gender in demographics (social justice, increase in number of pensioners, labor market); environment/ecology (education, ecofeminism); and corporate responsibility (consumer decisions and leadership). In each section, a definition is developed, being supported by evidence from existing studies and a discussion on how sustainability may be defined in the context of gender concludes the paper. The paper suggests that gender has a clear social impact, which constitutes a relevant and important seed for the achievement of sustainable development.

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Section: Categorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Definitions of Sustainability in the Context of Gender

Odrowąż‐Coates

2021

Sustainability

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“…This “zooming out” is the final point illustrated in Figure 2, and is tackled in different ways by Kurz et al (2020), Bloodhart and Swim (2020), and Schmitt et al (2020). Bloodhart and Swim examine sustainable consumption through a gender analysis lens, and argue that gender stereotypes and norms shape the way that people tend to think about, and respond to, the challenge of sustainable consumption.…”

Section: Sustainable Consumption: the Psychology Of Individual Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The theoretical and high‐level critique by Schmitt et al (2020) is echoed at the practical and specific level by Richardson et al.’s (2020) frustration with incentive structures faced by ECRs, by Dreyer et al.’s (2020) exhortation to work in interdisciplinary teams, by Bloodhart and Swim's (2020) recommendation to the examine the intersection of (un)sustainable practices with gendered and/or marginalized social identities, and by Saber and Silka's (2020) case study of interdisciplinary efforts to address the “wicked problem” of food waste. These concerns may cause some discomfort among traditional empirical social psychologists, and taking them seriously ought also to cause some discomfort among the institutions of social psychology.…”

Section: Sustainable Consumption: the Psychology Of Individual Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Consumption: The Psychology of Individual Choice, Identity, and Behavior

Ruby

Walker

Watkins

2020

Journal of Social Issues

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The global human community is facing an increasingly urgent dilemma: How do we improve standards of living while lessening our impact on the environment? This special issue presents recent contributions from both psychological and interdisciplinary research on sustainable consumption. To situate these articles in a broader context, we first establish the necessity of improving sustainable consumption and discuss some of the foundational psychological work addressing this issue. Second, we outline how sustainability can be addressed at various stages, from production and marketing to consumption and waste. Third, we stress the need to broaden the focus on individual consumption to include collective action. Fourth, we discuss a number of critiques of past research on sustainable consumption. Finally, we highlight the importance of interdisciplinary research in supporting sustainable development. These themes are all addressed in greater depth by each of the contributions to the special issue.

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“…Psychologists have opportunities to challenge the individualization of responsibility by studying predictors of engagement in social protest and other forms of activism (e.g., Bell & Braun, 2010;Farrell, 2013;McFarlane & Hunt, 2006;Schmitt, Mackay, Droogendyk, & Payne, 2019), and by doing so, remind people that such actions are possible and important avenues of climate change mitigation. Of course, individual consumption remains an important site for research and intervention, but we argue it is best understood within a context of unequal power relations (see Bloodhart & Swim, 2020, for an analysis of gender, power, and sustainable consumption).…”

Section: The Pbe Ignores the Possibility Of Social Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Understandably, psychologists might be tempted to leave such issues for sociologists and economists. However, treating those issues as separate from psychology denies the reality that psychological processes exist within these larger structures and intergroup relationships, and both shape and are shaped by them (see also Bloodhart & Swim, ). We argue that decoupling psychological barriers to climate action from the larger systems in which these psychological processes take place constitutes a form of psychological reductionism in which explanations for human behavior primarily consider individual mental states (Martin‐Baró, ).…”

Section: Power Inequality and The Social‐structural Context Of (In)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Perils of Explaining Climate Inaction in Terms of Psychological Barriers

Schmitt

Neufeld

Mackay

et al. 2019

Journal of Social Issues

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As awareness of climate change and its consequences increases, many have asked, “Why aren't people taking action?” Some psychologists have provided an answer that we describe as a “psychological barriers explanation” (PBE). The PBE suggests that human nature is limited in ways that create psychological barriers to taking action on climate change. Taking a critical social psychology approach (e.g., Adams, 2014), we offer a critique of the PBE, arguing that locating the causes of inaction at the psychological level promotes a misrepresentation of human nature as static and disconnected from context. Barriers to environmental action certainly exist, and most if not all involve psychological processes. However, locating the barrier itself at the psychological level ignores the complex interplay between psychological tendencies, social relations, and social structures. We consider the ways in which psychological responses to climate change are contingent upon social‐structural context, with particular attention to the ways unequal distributions of power have allowed elites to block climate action, in part by using their power to influence societal beliefs and norms. In conclusion, we suggest that psychologists interested in climate (in)action expand their scope beyond individual consumer behaviors to include psychological questions that challenge existing power relations and raise the possibility of transformative social change.

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Sustainability and Consumption: What's Gender Got to Do with It?

Cited by 93 publications

References 43 publications

Definitions of Sustainability in the Context of Gender

Definitions of Sustainability in the Context of Gender

Sustainable Consumption: The Psychology of Individual Choice, Identity, and Behavior

The Perils of Explaining Climate Inaction in Terms of Psychological Barriers

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