Energy housekeeping: intersections of gender, domestic labour and technologies

Abstract

Emerging energy technologies and tools aim to enhance peoples’ understanding and control over household energy. Yet, important questions are emerging about precisely whose understanding and control such technologies benefit, and how increasingly commonplace tools may shape the gendered division of domestic labour. This article explores how smart energy technologies, and in particular energy feedback, may reproduce or further entrench the unequal distribution of household labour between men and women. Theories of social practice are used to frame ethnographic research (semi-structured interviews, card game prompts and home tours) conducted with 24 Australian households using solar photovoltaics and batteries. Evidence is provided of men interpreting energy feedback for other household members, policing other householders’ energy-using practices and more broadly orchestrating patterns of energy consumption. Building on the concept of ‘digital housekeeping’, which refers to the gendered way in which domestic technologies are used and maintained, the paper suggests these practices constitute gendered forms of ‘energy housekeeping’. The energy housekeeping concept provides a means of understanding how emerging energy technologies and tools intersect with issues of gender and domestic labour. <em><strong>Practice relevance</strong></em> It is well established that domestic labour is largely performed by women. Research also shows that the use of smart technologies and energy feedback are gendered. Evidence from Australian households with solar photovoltaics and batteries shows that energy feedback and associated technologies may reinforce gender asymmetries in the home and enable men to control the domestic labour undertaken by others in the home. These outcomes are undesirable, even if they advance sector aims of aligning domestic energy consumption with patterns of renewable generation. Current energy management and feedback approaches need to engage with and be tailored for a wider, more diverse group of domestic energy users. This will better reflect the different ways that people engage with and think about energy.