As part of the Nordic Council of Ministers‘ cross-sectoral programme Sustainable Living in the Nordic Region 2021-2024, NIKK has carried out the project Sustainability, lifestyles, and consumption from a gender perspective, which resulted in the report Climate, Gender and Consumption. The report highlights, challenges and contributes to insights on gender stereotypes in relation to consumption and lifestyle. It shows, among other things, that ideals of caregiving can be an important key to the green transition.

‘People with caring responsibilities, regardless of gender, also tend to take more responsibility for the climate and make more environment-friendly lifestyle choices,’ said Jimmy Sand, analyst, in a presentation of results from publications by NIKK within the programme Sustainable Living in the Nordic Region, at the Sustainable Living Summit in Stockholm on 15 October (the conference was recorded and is available online).

The conference was the final event of the programme Sustainable Living in the Nordic Region and was organised by Nordregio, the coordinator of the programme since 2023. The conference’s session What impacts young people’s lifestyle choices? highlighted the results of the new report Climate, Youth and Gender – Inclusion strategies for Nordic youth movement, commissioned by Nordregio and written by NIKK. The study highlights challenges at the intersection of climate engagement, gender and other categories, with a particular focus on young people in the Nordic region.

In the context of the work that was done within Sustainable Living in the Nordic Region, NIKK also compiled the results of previous NIKK reports and published the publication Gender Perspectives on Green Jobs in the Nordic Region. The publication highlights how issues of gendered educational choices and gender-segregated labor market, norms on skills and distribution of care work are related to the transition to green jobs.

The programme has had a significant impact on collaboration between several different sectors and cooperation bodies within Nordic cooperation. There has been great interest in the reports produced by NIKK within the programme, and NIKK has presented them in several different contexts, selected here:

• The report Climate, Gender and Consumption – a research overview with a gender perspective on sustainable lifestyles was presented at an interdepartmental seminar in Oslo in September 2022 and launched at an event in Copenhagen in December 2022.
• Presentations of Climate, Gender and Consumption at the Nordic Council Committee for a Sustainable Nordic Region in January 2023, at the Forum for Gender Equality in Malmö in February 2023, and a panel discussion in that were arranged together with the Government of Åland in Mariehamn in April 2023. 
• In May 2023, NIKK presented the report Climate, Gender and Consumption in a at the LOGIN conference in Vilnius, in a panel discussion organised by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ office in Lithuania as part of Nordic Talks.  
• Media attention with, for example, articles in Dagens Nyheter: Women more engaged in the climate issue and in Nya Åland: Stereotypes about male and female complicate climate workand in Dagens ETC: Where are the guys in the fight for the climate? | Dagens ETC.
• Presentation (public lecture) based on the reports Climate, Gender and Consumption and Gender Perspectives on Green Jobs in the Nordic Region, at the Institute of People and Technology, Roskilde University in December 2023. In connection with the presentation, NIKK also participated in an academic seminar with the research group Scandinavian Sustainability Transitions Revisited in an Intersectional Perspective. 
• The report Climate, Youth and Gender – Inclusion strategies for Nordic youth movement was launched in August 2024 at Nordregio’s webinar Where are the boys in climate action?

According to the Swedish research company Ungdomsbarometern, young people in Sweden still see political parties and organizations as good ways to influence society, but boys and girls have different priorities. Not least on the climate issue.

‘Far more girls than boys see supporting or joining an organization as the best way to influence society. Young girls are also more concerned about the climate than young boys.’, said Johanna Göransson, senior consultant at Ungdomsbarometern.

She presented the 2024 survey on social engagement among young people in Sweden, at Nordregio’s webinar “Where are the boys in climate action? How to break the bubbles and join forces” (see the embedded video on this page) on August 28. The webinar launched the report “Climate, Youth and Gender – Inclusive strategies for Nordic youth movements”, which NIKK has written for Nordregio within the Sustainable Living programme.

Based on interviews and a survey among board members of youth organizations in the Nordic countries, the study draws attention to challenges at the intersection of climate engagement, gender and other categories, with a particular focus on young people in the Nordic region. The study identifies patterns of youth engagement related to aspects of gender, equality and diversity, and the report provides examples of how youth organizations address these patterns in terms of inclusion and recruitment.

Several strategies for breaking patterns

The report suggests and describes in depth several strategies to break the patterns, both for the internal and external outreach and engagement of members; 1) put the issue of inclusion and diversity on the agenda, 2) adopt a code of conduct with policies on discrimination and harassment, 3) create a safe space and a culture of openness to different views, 4) search beyond established patterns in recruitment and outreach, and 5) lower thresholds and formal requirements for engagement.

Education has impact on engagement

Previous research shows that people, both women and men, who are more care-oriented are also more interested in climate issues and more willing to adapt to sustainable lifestyles. The findings from the survey by Ungdomsbarometern, that young people seem to be more concerned about the climate while differences are visible at group level between boys and girls, are also confirmed in the new report.

‘People who are uninterested in or even opposed to action on climate and sustainability are mostly those who identify themselves as men,’ said report author Jimmy Sand, analyst at NIKK.

While young women are overrepresented in environmental organizations, the report suggests that education level and field of study can be a strong explanatory factor. Those studying social sciences at university level are more likely to be involved in these issues than, for example, those in vocational training at upper secondary school.

‘This reflects patterns in educational choices that are also evident in other contexts, where more women than men continue their studies in higher education and where men predominate in technical education,’ said Jimmy Sand.

Diversity may require compromise

The lack of resources is a major challenge for diversity and recruitment efforts, as highlighted by Alva Danielsson from the Nordic-Baltic network organization ReGeneration2030, one of the webinar’s youth representatives.

‘This is one of the toughest dilemmas we have. With little resources, we need to build capacity and create resilience within the organization. At the same time, we need to bring in more new members. We need more people involved, as this is the only way to bring about change in society’, said Alva Danielsson.

The question of recruitment was tested in the discussion: should resources be spent on increasing diversity by trying to recruit people who are not interested – or even opposed to the issues? Or on those who are interested but just haven’t taken the step to get involved yet? The study shows that organizations need to take into account and compromise with the lack of diversity on the one hand, and how social dimensions are integrated into environmental and climate issues on the other.

‘The gender bias in organizations may be related to which groups are most affected by climate change. The focus on gender, equality and climate, which men as a group are less interested in, may also alienate young men. One way to address this could be to also focus on aspects such as class, regionality, minority issues, race and ethnicity for example,’ said Jimmy Sand.

Watch the Nordregio webinar:

During the years 2020-2022, NIKK has produced reports on topics such as the labor market and gendered study choices as well as sustainable development. NIKK has now gathered parts of the results from the reports in a publication that highlights how issues of gendered educational choices and gender-segregated labor market, norms on skills and distribution of care work are related to the transition to green jobs. Among other things, it shows how relevant issues can be drawn from several different areas of society, and that a gender perspective is required for the green transition to be sustainable.  

“Climate policies tend to create more jobs in the field of technology, while at the same time increasing the workload of households. If you want to make job investments for the climate and at the same time break the gender-segregated labor market, you need to challenge the norms and values that affect the development of society”, says Jimmy Sand, analyst at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research. 

The publication highlights and discusses the challenges of the green transition based on five thematic approaches: Talent management and education systems, interventions to break down gender segregation, gender labelling of technology and of sustainability, academic norms and workplace culture and social sustainability, welfare systems and the significance of place. The results are also summarized in twenty key messages. 

Gender perspective on green jobs in printable PDF

How can we make it possible to live sustainably in the Nordic countries? How can we better understand how differences in lifestyle that affect sustainability arise? Sustainable production and consumption, Goal 12 of the 2030 Agenda, has been identified as one of the areas where the Nordic countries face the biggest challenges in their sustainable development work. This area is also the focus of the NIKK project Sustainability, lifestyles, and consumption from a gender perspective, which is part of the Nordic Council of Ministers’ programme Sustainable lifestyles in the Nordic region. 

The new research overview entitled Climate, gender and consumption – a research overview of gender perspectives on sustainable lifestyles summarises the state of international research in seven different areas: Food, Housing and energy, Clothing and consumer goods, Transport, Work and time use, Culture and tourism, and Activism and influence. The report aims to reveal and challenge gender stereotypes as they relate to consumption and lifestyles, and to contribute to a better understanding of how gender differences arise and are reinforced and reproduced in these areas. 

Ideals and norms have an impact on the climate

“At the group level, there are clear and not very surprising differences between men and women. For example, men eat more meat than women do, and meat consumption has a bigger impact on the climate than vegetarian foods do. But a more detailed analysis shows that the underlying factor in this is norms and ideals, rather than gender per se. For example, men who want to be perceived as ‘real men’ also eat more meat. Conversely, a traditional feminine body ideal leads to a more vegetarian diet, but this is not primarily a result of consideration for the climate,” says Jimmy Sand, author of the report and analyst at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research, University of Gothenburg. 

Attitudes and behaviours are influenced by norms and ideals that relate to care and technology, and these areas are often associated with femininity and masculinity, respectively. All in all leading to a greater or lesser impact on the climate. 

“Generally, women are more inclined to change their behaviours, while men are more interested in technical solutions to the climate crisis, such as solar panels. Prejudices about technical expertise as being a masculine field can also deter women from engaging with matters that concern technology,” says Jimmy Sand. 

Care ideal promotes sustainable lifestyles – in both women and men

How unpaid domestic and care work is organised affects transport patterns, for example. Those who work part-time and who are responsible for dropping off and picking up children, and making the daily purchases for the household, travel in ways that are quite different to full-time workers who tend to travel more directly between home and work. 

Women as a group are more involved with sustainability issues and also more oriented towards care values than men as a group, the research overview shows. Based on the research carried out in this field, sustainability and consideration for the climate seem to be more important to individuals, regardless of gender, who are engaged in domestic and care work and see this work as important. 

“In studies where men are shown as driving sustainability, these are men who are taking the main care responsibilities in their households,” says Jimmy Sand. 

Key takeaways 

• Gender, understood as social norms, is often more important than sex as a statistical variable. Individuals oriented towards caregiving – an ideal often associated with femininity, regardless of sex – are more engaged with sustainability and show more sustainable behaviour patterns.  

• The uneven distribution of unpaid domestic and care work, for which women as a group take a greater share of the responsibility than men as a group, and the normative coding of technology as a male domain, have consequences for the different impacts of individuals on the climate; and consequently for what efforts should be made to reduce this impact.  

• Women as a group are ascribed a greater responsibility for the environment as consumers than men as a group due to social norms concerning fashion consumption, but also because women more often than men are responsible for cooking the meals in households and for washing and buying clothes for the family members.  

• Traffic planners, vehicle manufacturers, food producers, energy companies, the fashion industry, etc., all have great power to influence the climate impact in their spheres, and thus bear a great responsibility for the green transition. When responsibility is placed on consumers instead, it risks being individualised. Due to norms of femininity and masculinity, the unequal distribution of unpaid domestic and care work and the feminisation of consumption, where men’s behaviour patterns in this space are rendered invisible, may entail a particular burden of responsibility on women as a group. 

• If reducing working hours with associated changes in consumption is to be used as a strategy to achieve more sustainable lifestyles, it should be based on efforts to influence the preferences of men as a group, and to support the ideal of caring among men.  

An accessible online version can be found here

In a mapping, differences in women’s and men’s lifestyles and consumption in the Nordic countries will be examined. Through current knowledge, the mapping aims to make gender stereotypes visible and challenged in relation to consumption and lifestyle, and contribute to a better understanding of how differences arise, are strengthened and reproduced.

‘The project aims to illustrate gender differences in lifestyles and consumption and the need for future policies and practices to integrate gender aspects into sustainable consumption. As gender equality is key in order to achieve a sustainable Nordic region, the project contributes greatly to the vision of the Nordic Council of Ministers of becoming the most sustainable and integrated region in the world in 2030’, says Kristin Mattsson, steering group member of the cross-sectoral Nordic programme.

Sustainability and lifestyle concepts will be studied and analysed from a broad intersectional gender perspective, in relation to themes raised in the cross-sectoral program on sustainable lifestyles. These can be, for example, communication about sustainability, education for sustainability, sustainable cultural and food experiences.

Critical and intersectional perspectives will be included thoroughly to make visible and problematize how different power structures intersect, for example how class and age affect both consumption habits and norms around consumption.

By analysing sustainability and lifestyle from a gender perspective, the project contributes to improving understanding and opportunities for sustainable consumption. The knowledge mapping will be launched in autumn 2022.

About the Sustainable lifestyles in the Nordic region programme

The cross-sectoral programme Sustainable lifestyles in the Nordic region programme is a collaboration between the Nordic co-operations for sustainable development, environment and climate, food, culture, education and research, gender equality and Nordbuk, the Nordic committee for children and youth. The programme is carried out 2021-2024 and aims to make it easier and more attractive for Nordic consumers to prioritise healthy and climate and environmental friendly choices. Through several cross-sectorial initiatives, it will contribute to fasten the normalisation of sustainable lifestyles in the Nordic region.

The programme, as well as the project focusing on gender perspectives on sustainably contribute to the Nordic vision, especially the part concerning a green Nordic region, as well as several of the Sustainable Development Goals in Agenda 2030.