Are Women Dim Bulbs When It Comes to the Environment?
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Posted by Miranda Spencer May 1st, 2007 |
By now most people know they can “do their part” to slow global warming by replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescent ones (CFLs). But despite the continued improvement in the quality and cost of the lights, which last up to seven years, they just aren’t taking off in US markets. Why? According to an article in the Washington Post yesterday, fussbudget females are to blame.
The title tells the tale: “Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity: Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives.” At issue: “A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week showed that while women are more likely than men to say they are ‘very willing’ to change behavior to help the environment, they are less likely to have CFL bulbs at home.” The article goes on, “In groceries and drugstores, where 70 percent to 90 percent of light bulbs historically have been sold and where women usually have been the ones doing the buying, CFLs have not taken off nearly as fast as they have in home-improvement stores such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, where men do much of the shopping.”
In exploring this eco-gender gap, the piece — written by staff writer Blaine Harden — mingles 1950s-style stereotypes with survey statistics and pseudo sociology to back up its thesis that that sensible, eco-savvy CFLs just don’t pass “the wife test.”
One source Harden quotes for this wisdom is male market research manager My Ton. “After a decade as a researcher in residential lighting… [Ton] said he has concluded that a major part of the CFL problem in penetrating the American home ‘is a lack of communication between the sexes.’”
Apparently, men — without so much as consulting their spouses — march home from the store, screw in the bulbs, and so spark the heat of women’s wrath.
As another source, Wendy Reed, director of the federal government’s Energy Star campaign, explains it, “I have heard time and again that a husband goes out and puts the bulb into the house, thinking he is doing a good thing. Then, the CFL bulb is changed back out by the women. It seems that women are much more concerned with how things look. We are the nesters.”
That’s the story of the Siffords, a couple interviewed for the piece. Sara Sifford “knows that the bulbs… save money and use less energy, thus cutting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change. …Still, the bulbs, with their initial flicker, slow warm-up and slightly weird color, bug her.” What’s more, Harden elaborates a few grafs later, people like Sara can’t forget the “bulky” earlier generations of fluorescent lights… [with their] annoying flicker and hum” and their “icky, cold-white light that made people look pale, wrinkly and old.”
Leave it to those irrational women and their girlie esthetics to stand in the way of environmental progress! And stand they do: In the accompanying video, Harden sounds cowed by his own wife, telling the camera that he’s still working on getting her to accept CFLs in every fixture, but for now it’s a standoff.
Slightly dim dames also play a role in the Sundance Channel’s ad campaign for “The Green,” its new suite of environment-themed TV and internet programming. The ad features a befuddled-looking woman beside the headline, “I thought my carbon footprint referred to my shoe size!” That’s followed by the tag line, “Thanks for sharing. We’re here to help.” * Who knew actor/director Robert Redford, the longtime environmental activist behind both the Sundance Channel and “The Green,” was so paternalistic?
That marketing offense is offset somewhat by the fact that both of the show’s hosts are women: journalist Simran Sethi and community activist Majora Carter. That choice makes me suspect “The Green”’s target audience may be women, though an online press release says it aims simply to attract “independent-minded viewers seeking something different.”
Too bad the image of the tech-phobic, scientifically ignorant woman is more of the same old thing.
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*View the Sundance Channel ad by visiting the Environmental News Network at www.enn.com and clicking on an article; it appears in part of the new window. I’ve also seen it on the side of a bus.
May 2nd, 2007 19:33
Why Do Women Hate The Environment?
Was doing my rounds of the chick blogs and this one has me puzzled (via feministing and WIMN):Alex and Sara Sifford, who live here on the Oregon coast, want to do the right thing to save a warming world. To
May 3rd, 2007 06:50
Glad to see you and Feministing picked this up on your blogs, but please…the term “chick blog” makes me gnash my teeth and I’ll bet Jessica Valenti agrees!
May 3rd, 2007 12:11
Erm… whats your point here? You simply restate the original article, giving it a dash of sexist spin - e.g. you highlight the sex of the “male market research manager”, who later on is “cowed” by his wife.
And surely the ad for The Green is patronising rather than paternalistic - it offends the intelligence of anyone who looks at it. Come on, the bemused person had to be a member of one sex and you’d hardly complain if it showed the more usual befuddled man seen in advertising.
The original article presented some marginal but at least quantative arguments supporting the claim that women don’t put their money where their mouth is on environmental issues. You make no attempt to refute it, presenting mere rhetoric instead.
May 3rd, 2007 12:13
I’m all about making people gnash teeth. It’s the only way I can get traffic.
May 3rd, 2007 12:56
To Russell, There is no percentage in “refuting” nonsense. I don’t doubt that studies have found some sort of gender gap in CFL buying; the problem with the article is not that it reported the issue per se, but that it offered only speculation and pseudo-social science to advance a flimsy premise: that there is such a thing as a “wife test.” Where were the actual social scientists? We got only an anecdotal couple, a marketing manager, and an Energy Star spokesperson.
As for “The Green,” I don’t think they’d ever have considered putting a doofusy male in place of the female. If they had to take this route, perhaps a confused couple would have been fairer. I do agree it’s a condescending campaign overall.
May 3rd, 2007 13:26
NTodd, why such a trafficwhore?
May 3rd, 2007 14:17
Jenn - the more traffic I get, the more stuff people buy me from my Amazon Wishlist! Plus, as an only child (probably for obvious reasons at this point), I crave attention.
Miranda - while I didn’t explicitly bring up the “wife test” in my post, I was floored that such language was even bandied about. The whole thing did strike me as pseudo-sociological babble and argument from anecdote, the paltry survey data notwithstanding.
May 6th, 2007 07:43
Um, I’m the wife in that article or a reasonable facsimile. My husband did go out and get those bulbs and change them throughout the house without saying anything to me about it. I didn’t like it, but I hate the house being dark and used 100 or at least 75 watters everywhere. I just thought he stuck normal 60 watt bulbs into all our light fixtures at first. Once he explained what they were I didn’t mind as much but insisted he change out the bulb over the laundry area in the basement for a normal 100 watt bulb. It’s damned dark in that basement! This was when they first came out. I think there is more going on then women lie about wanting to save the environment. First, I had never heard of these bulbs when my husband bought them, and he did get them at the hardware store. This leads me to believe they were originally marketed to men in hardware stores instead of women in grocery stores. Second, the reason for this is probably price. Women do have to be careful with the grocery budget and these bulbs are expensive compared to incandescent. I think that’s why they were marketed to men first with the spin on saving on the electric bill. Whether men actually sit down and write the check out to the electric co, they usually are still aware of how much goes towards that and want to save.
May 7th, 2007 04:46
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