sustain abili-dit Words by Olivia Veronese
‘Girls, come on. Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don’t think so.’ This iconic line, spoken by Elastigirl in The Incredibles (2004), frames the idea of the eco gender gap better than any market psychology study ever could. Similarly to The Incredibles, women have jumped ahead of their male counterparts when it comes to making eco-friendly consumer decisions. The ‘eco gender gap’ describes the disparity of environmental awareness and eco-friendly actions that occurs between women and men (sorry gender-diverse peeps, market research is behind the times in their demographic groups). In 2018, a British market research group found that 71% of women in the UK were committing to a more sustainable lifestyle, compared to 59% of men (Mintel, 2018). This on its own is only a 12% difference – surely nothing too major? But, when combined with the fact that a majority of domestic sustainable items are targeted to be used in cleaning, food, and laundry – areas where women are overrepresented – this has a much larger impact. In the US, a 2019 study found that women make between 70% and 80% of decisions relating to food, household goods and other consumables (Finder, 2021). This has a significant influence on the branding and marketing decisions made by companies selling eco-friendly items. In 2018, Jack Duckett, a senior consumer 22
lifestyles analyst, said that ‘eco-friendly campaigns and product claims are largely aimed at female audiences’ as a result of women still typically running the household (Hunt, 2020). Zara Bending, a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Law at Macquarie University and a board director for the Jane Goodall Institute Australia, is also well positioned to comment on the topic. She says that ‘green-branding may as well be pink-branding’, where sustainability is increasingly being marketed as invisible women’s work (Wallis, 2021). She says that eco-friendly choices and awareness are a socially presumed responsibility of women, thanks to the gendered mental load. This describes the cognitive labour of the non-tangible tasks involved in running a household and family, another area where women are overrepresented. Like many of the fiddlesome issues in our society, the eco gender gap is complex. It’s influenced by a range of interconnected factors, including marketing, patriarchal gender roles, but also social responsibility. Rachel Howell, a lecturer in sustainable development at the University of Edinburgh, explains that ‘women have higher levels of socialisation to care about others and be socially responsible, which then leads them to care about environmental problems and be willing to adopt environmental behaviours’ (Hunt, 2020).
