Wednesday June 24 was the hottest day ever recorded in France. 58 departments and 44 million inhabitants have been affected by extreme heat since last weekend. 1,800 schools are closed. Who will take care of the children, shelter them, prepare fresh and balanced meals to follow the recommendations of Public Health France?
There is a good chance that women will be put to greater use. Whether it is dealing with the consequences of global warming or implementing everyday ecological actions, they are the ones who often find themselves on the front lines. Discreet work, rarely measured, but very real.
Intensified domestic work
This is what a qualitative survey published by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation demonstrates, carried out for Citeo among around sixty women and men with varied profiles, in terms of age, socio-professional category, place of living but also ecological sensitivity. And the observation is unequivocal.
The home is often seen through the prism of sharing, where differences are erased in favor of what the family or couple puts in place collectively. When it comes to ecology, this is particularly striking. We are green, a little, a lot, at times. We share the pride of acting for the planet or the guilt of not doing enough. But this “we” reveals nothing about “who does what?” “. It minimizes the role of each person in the management of everyday ecology. And it first and foremost makes women’s ecological work invisible.
Adopting ecological practices on a daily basis, these famous “small gestures”, often amounts to intensifying domestic work, which we know still largely falls on women.
Guardians of good practices
Women are more often than men at the initiative of new actions. They are more in anticipation of what needs to be done. While some men go to fill the shopping carts at the supermarket, women often continue to make the shopping list: the one that specifies the seasonal fruits and vegetables to buy, the packaging to check, the products to avoid.
They are often more expert on the right actions to adopt. But this expertise comes at a cost. They become the guardians of good practices within the home. Many say they have to go behind their spouse or children to check and correct the contents of the green, yellow or brown trash cans. Because they “know better”, it is also on them that the educational burden of children regarding the environment rests. One more responsibility!
And in the most ecologically committed households, when actions become more complex, take more time or involve greater constraints, there again, it is often women who take over. The ecological Do-it-yourself market is not mistaken. Offers allowing you to make your own shampoo, laundry detergent or household products are aimed at a female audience.
Double punishment
“We are at the maximum. I can’t add any other things,” confides one interviewee. The guilt is all the stronger as many struggle to hide their concern about the state of the planet. Some evoke the maternal instinct, the fear for future generations. This is perhaps one of the rare aspects of this ecological burden that quantitative surveys today manage to measure: ecoanxiety is stronger among women than among men. Like a double punishment.
And yet, the women interviewed are reluctant to name the ecological burden. When it comes to the environment, they often tend to minimize the unequal sharing of tasks, before recognizing that they are doing more. But as much as the notion of mental load allows them to put words to an experienced reality, that of ecological load sometimes appears to them as a subject of additional tension that they do not wish to add to their daily lives.
The solution is to be found elsewhere. We must reduce this green and invisible work, better distribute efforts to meet the challenges facing us. There is undoubtedly part of the answer in cooperation and complementarity between women and men. But it is also urgent to think about the transformation of our lifestyles through offers, services, infrastructure and collective organizations, in order to support women and involve men more.
The heatwave we are currently experiencing proves this to us. These climatic episodes are expected to multiply. They generate additional work: monitor, anticipate, protect, adapt. It would not be fair or acceptable for this burden to fall on women alone.
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