Prof. Jessica Cattelino interview: Gender and everyday water use in Los Angeles households

Watch the interview here. @ The Center for the Study of Women: How does gender impact the way people in Los Angeles use water—and can understanding the connections between gender and water use help us find new ways to conserve? CSW Associate Director Jessica Cattelino (PI) and CSW Director Rachel Lee (Co-PI) were recently awarded a grant from UCLA’s Sustainable LA Grand Challenge program in order to tackle these questions. Her pioneering new research project, “Gender and Everyday Water Use in Los Angeles,” will be the first of its kind and will ask new questions about how to conserve water for future generations. Along with ten other initiatives funded as part of the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge this year, this study will help researchers and policymakers envision and build a more sustainable future for Los Angeles in the face of climate change. The study will examine how gender shapes the way that people use, value, and save water on an everyday basis. It is well known that women disproportionately procure and manage household water in developing nations. Despite the fact that household work and decision-making remain highly gendered in the United States, there is little scholarship on gender and residential water use here. Selecting four diverse Los Angeles neighborhoods, CSW researchers will observe everyday gendered water practices, not only studying women but also documenting indoor and outdoor water practices for all adults over a two-year period. By using a combination of anthropological methods—surveys, participant observation, etc.—and by explicitly using gender as an analytical lens, this study will reveal new data about how gender intersects with race and class to inform the way that Angelenos use water, and ways that we might conserve. CSW researchers will use the results of this study to advise legislators and policymakers on how to reduce water use, increase use of greywater, and encourage other sustainable indoor and outdoor residential practices.