Labour Day Reflections: The Green Movement’s Unspoken Misogyny

Can We Agree to "Just Stop Toil"?

Labour Day stands as an annual tribute to the dignity of work, to the advances made by workers, and to the ongoing struggle for fair conditions and equality. It’s a day to honour the progress achieved and to confront uncomfortable truths about who is being left behind or bears the burdens in societal transformations. This year, it’s time to critically reflect on the green movement—a cause often thought to be virtuous, but in practice, perpetuates a subtle persistent misogyny that deserves our scrutiny.

In the well-meaning rush for a supposedly greener future, are we sacrificing the hard-won gains of women, especially the unseen and uncelebrated domestic workers upon whom so much of modern life rests? Core elements of the green movement have targeted and demonized labour-saving devices, forms of energy, and personal transport that have been essential to women’s liberation, autonomy, and daily safety for generations.

Environmental campaigns often criticize household appliances like tumble dryers, dishwashers, and microwaves for their energy consumption. “Line dry your clothes!” “Hand wash your dishes!” These calls, ubiquitous in eco-advice columns, rarely grapple with the social realities underlying such recommendations. Who, after all, is expected to spend extra hours hunched over a sink scrubbing dishes or pegging damp clothes to a line between shifts at work, childcare, and community responsibilities? These tasks disproportionately fall to women.

Labour-saving devices were revolutionary not simply for their mechanical ingenuity but for the freedom they provided—freedom most acutely felt by women. For many, a tumble dryer means laundry doesn’t pile up during a rainy or freezing week, and a dishwasher means reclaiming time for rest or paid employment. Studies show that their adoption significantly boosted women’s workforce participation by reducing home production hours. It also served to improve women’s quality of life. When the green movement scolds these choices, and scold they do, it undermines the principle that women’s time is valuable and their autonomy worth protecting.

The war on reliable energy—hydrocarbons and nuclear in particular—has led to the rise of intermittent weather-dependent sources such as wind and solar, which are currently less reliable and more expensive for most communities. As utilities implement load control and energy rationing (currently voluntary) to accommodate the fluctuations of green energy, it is often women, particularly single mothers and those with shift work or caregiving roles, who pay the highest price for disrupted, unreliable, or unaffordable power.

Affordable, always-on energy makes possible everything from food preparation to home heating, to charging the very phones and devices that connect women to their support networks. Energy poverty is a daily reality for those forced to choose between light, warmth, and other essentials. When green policies ignore the gendered dimension of energy access, they risk perpetuating a new form of domestic servitude—a 21st-century echo of old burdens, inequalities, and drudgery.

Consider, too, the green movement’s emphasis on giving up internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in favour of electric cars, public transport, or ride-sharing. The issue here is not merely one of tailpipe emissions, but one of control, safety, and reliability. For many women, especially those living outside dense urban cores, a reliable vehicle is a lifeline—a means to safely travel to work, school, or home when women want without fear.

Electric vehicles, for all their promise, remain unaffordable for many, especially as ICE vehicles are regulated away and electricity costs increase. Meanwhile, public transit—long touted as the green solution—remains patchy, unreliable, and, for too many women, unsafe. Stories abound of harassment and assault on buses and trains, and the prospect of waiting at a deserted station late at night is a chilling one. Ride-sharing, often presented as a flexible alternative, has been similarly plagued by safety issues, and cannot supplant the empowerment of independent reliable personal mobility.

The environmental or green movement’s rhetoric is replete with appeals to sacrifice, urging us to give up “selfish” conveniences for the greater good. Yet, too often, it is women who are called to sacrifice their time, safety, and well-being in the name of a distant environmental ideal couched in the guilt-language of “think of your children and grandchildren”. Sustainability, properly understood, must include sustaining the freedoms, dignity, and daily lives of women. It must not ask, “What can we take away?” but, “How can we innovate so that everyone, especially those long burdened by invisible labour, benefits from progress?”

On this Labour Day, let’s remember that progress is not a zero-sum game. The future we build must not slip backward into old patterns of gendered expectation and invisible toil. The green movement can, and must, align its vision with the realities of women’s work and lives. Let’s work towards a future that will not retrench old inequalities but will honour the spirit of the holiday: liberation, equality, and dignity for every worker—at home, at work, and in the world we share.