research-article

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”Do they pass the woman test?”: Navigating and negotiating the gendering of residential solar panels

Authors:

Maria Håkansson,

Sara Renström,

László Sall Vesselényi,

Julia Jonasson TolvAuthors Info & Claims

NordiCHI '22: Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference

Article No.: 47, Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/3546155.3546643

Published: 08 October 2022 Publication History

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Abstract

Residential solar panels are increasingly popular, yet women are largely invisible as customers and users. This creates barriers for reaching gender equality and climate goals where increased renewable energy is key. We present results from a norm-critical study drawing on 10 interviews with solar industry representatives and focus groups with 28 women, either owning solar panels or in the process of buying. The study aims to critically analyze current gender norms related to technology, market, and use, as well as to identify difficulties for women's solar panel engagement. The study shows how women at different touchpoints in the process of buying and having solar panels both navigate and negotiate an ongoing gendering of this technology, despite the industry attempts to present solar panels as gender neutral. While the study focuses on residential solar panels, the contribution is relevant for wider HCI, e.g. work related to smart home technologies.

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Cited By

Jensen VLaursen KJensen RSmith R(2024)Imagining Sustainable Energy Communities: Design Narratives of Future Digital Technologies, Sites, and ParticipationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642609(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642609

Index Terms

”Do they pass the woman test?”: Navigating and negotiating the gendering of residential solar panels
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI

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cover image ACM Other conferences

NordiCHI '22: Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference

October 2022

1091 pages

ISBN:9781450396998

DOI:10.1145/3546155

Copyright © 2022 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 08 October 2022

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Swedish Energy Agency

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NordiCHI '22

NordiCHI '22: Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference

October 8 - 12, 2022

Aarhus, Denmark

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Cited By

Jensen VLaursen KJensen RSmith R(2024)Imagining Sustainable Energy Communities: Design Narratives of Future Digital Technologies, Sites, and ParticipationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642609(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642609

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