Gender and Everyday Water Use in Los Angeles Households

The Challenge

Women are disproportionately responsible for the management of water and its use in households. Despite the fact that household work and decision-making remain highly gendered in the United States, there is limited scholarship on gender and residential water use here. The Gender and Water Project aims to better understand how gender shapes the way people use, value, and save water on an everyday basis in Los Angeles neighborhoods. The project hopes to reduce water consumption and encourage sustainable residential practices countywide in the long run. 

The Solution

Researchers from UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women (CSW) combine surveys with in-depth research in households to investigate the important but understudied role of gender in everyday water use across Los Angeles County. They explain gender also intersects with race and class, thus understanding the connections between gender and water use is key to finding new ways to conserve and inform policymaking.  

Nine households each from four diverse Los Angeles neighborhoods – Koreatown, MacArthur Park, Inglewood and Beverly Hills – were selected to observe patterns in cultural perceptions and practices of water use. Study participants were not restricted to just women but included all adults. This was to monitor how individual households make decisions about their water use in daily life, and examine whether these decisions are influenced by gender, race, and class. Ethnographic research was conducted on a total of 36 households (studying 1 household/month for 9 months), combining semi-structured interviews, video-based observations, and in-person surveys.  

Results

• There is a patterned gender division of labor in water use within Los Angeles households. Women are disproportionately responsible for how water is used and managed, from teaching their children about its use and value to possessing expertise in water conservation practices. 
• The working paper series for the Gender and Everyday Water Use in Los Angeles study is published on CSW’s e-scholarship platform. These five working papers in the series, written by participating student researchers, each address the following topics – Gender Division of Labor, Child Education, Immigration, Race and Class, Los Angeles as a Disaster City – and presents preliminary results from the study.  

Next Steps

Jessica Cattelino, the principal investigator, will lead a number of research articles for peer-review (with student researchers as co-authors) to present the main research findings. Researchers envision their findings will help inform legislators and policymakers on how to reduce water consumption, increase the use of greywater, and encourage other sustainable water practices in the future.  

Publications and Reports

Baker, M. (2019). Myths of Fifty-Fifty: Household Water Use & Gendered Divisions of Labor in Los Angeles. UCLA: Center for the Study of Women. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/97k0x27n 

Cecale, C. (2019). “Are You A Waste-A-Roo?”: Kid Cops, Water Education, and Individual Responsibility in Porous Los Angeles Households. UCLA: Center for the Study of Women. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4dn5c9rd 

Kim, K. (2019). Conservation, Division of Labor, and the Low-Hanging Fruit of Chores: Tracking Los Angeles Household Water Usage Through Diary Keeping. UCLA: Center for the Study of Women. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2ft6f8q1 

Nandar, P. (2019). Gender and Intergenerational Knowledge in Los Angeles Immigrant Households. UCLA: Center for the Study of Women. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5nf5r727 

Ozier, D. (2019). Portrait of a City at the End of the World: Los Angeles’s Discourses of Disaster. UCLA: Center for the Study of Women. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/54d1v0rs