Gender roles and domestic power in energy-saving home improvements.

The importance of considering gender aspects in studies on residential energy consumption has been acknowledged. However, an important topic is still ignored in gender and energy transitions research: domestic power for men and women differs depending on the type of couple to which they belong. According to Pierre Bourdieu, the chances of each spouse to exercise legitimate power in domestic affairs depend on their respective economic and symbolic capital. In other words, spouses-matching matters, and practices, gender domestic roles and social representations on energy-saving home improvements are influenced to a great extent by the type of union that matches both spouses’ respective socio-economic characteristics into homo- or heterogamic unions. This mixed-method research is based on extensive data collected in multiple efforts over 18 years, comprising: (1) several sets of in-depth interviews with adults married or in union realised between 2006 and 2021; and (2) three large quantitative surveys realised in 2004, 2014 and 2016. Results indicate that traditional gender roles and male domestic power are mostly challenged in hypogamous unions both in considering and in carrying energy-saving home improvements.