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?