Green housewife saves the world
As environmental awareness grows, many people, particularly young people, are eagerly "greening" themselves: checking that the deodorant spray contains no ozone-destroying chemicals or laboriously separating every bit of rubbish into separate piles for collection by a recycling-conscious local council.
It goes by the name of "green consumerism", and it seems to be getting more popular all the time. There is now a plethora of books and manuals on how to get better at it.
It's commendable, as far as it goes, but it's not enough on its own. The needed changes to the transport, energy consumption, industrial waste and other systems require more large-scale remedies than what can be done at the individual household level.
There is an argument that change can come up through the market/consumer. The consumer can "just say no" to environmentally unsound products. But take cars, for example: can we ask women with small children to give up their cars? Not if there's no public transport.
Once there's decent public transport (with more enlightened attitudes towards children: the sight of women struggling onto buses with small children while impatient drivers start rolling off from the stop is hardly an encouragement), then giving up cars becomes an option.
If cutting down on cars and scaling up public transport is really going to happen, it won't be because governments suddenly see the light. It will be because large numbers of us engage in the struggle to transform this area of our lives. That takes time and energy, and it can't be done alone.
The keenness for green consumerism in some quarters — for Labor politicians and some Democrats, for example — is clearly to do with the fact that it is the least challenging option, allowing the discussion to be diverted to individual habits, and leaving to one side the big questions to do with money and power.
Crucially, with sex-role stereotyping still rampant, despite important changes over the last two decades, the word "household" is virtually synonymous with work done by women in the home. Individualising responsibility for the environment just puts the burden back on women.
This privatisation of responsibility is what has been happening with, for instance, the program of "deinstitutionalisation" of the old and mentally ill. The euphemism is "community care"; the reality is that women are staying at home to do the work, often forgoing career, education or leisure to do so.
Suppose women did start doing what a Democrat speaker at the Ecopolitics V conference in Sydney in April suggested: using bicarb soda and vinegar and various other recipes for environmentally sound housecleaning. It might help to save one little corner of the planet.
But it would be more likely just to create a lot of guilt (because who really has time for bicarb soda when the Spray 'n' Wipe is 20 times faster and easier?) or a lot of slaves to the kitchen benches. In which case, there goes the opportunity to get to the local residents' action committee meeting to discuss a campaign against a proposed freeway!
By Tracy Sorensen