Women, consumption and the environment: conflicting accounts of gender in sustainability practices in urban Kerala, India

Women in the global south are at the heart of sustainability debates, persistently portrayed as having affinity with their biodiverse natural environments. These representations are incongruent amidst transformations of the global south into sites of consumerism, in which women participate as much as men. Consequently, there is little critical development of ‘women-environment’ debates with respect to women’s roles as consumers. This paper, set in the context of Kerala, southern India, uses feminist perspectives of practice theory to explore the normative socio-cultural contexts that engender particular acts and discourses of sustainability and consumption. Interviews, conducted across urban centres, highlight two contrasting women-centred discourses of sustainability: the first, echoing environmental justice advocates, locates women as naturally allied to leading sustainable consumption practices in the home, and change agents in their communities. In contrast, the second challenges the idea of women’s unique adeptness in sustainability, arguing instead that such narratives reinforce burdens of sustainability, negate women’s rights, and tacitly reassert patriarchal control. Space is implicated in these worldviews and practices, firstly at a material level, in terms of their perceived relationship with their natural environments, and, secondly, as a political construct defining their public-private roles. Understanding women’s everyday efforts to practice responsible consumption reveals deeper questions about whether sustainability works for women as much as they do for sustainability.