Imagine your house without running power. Say bye to conveniences like food storage in the fridge; hot showers on cold winter days and, not to mention, flushing the toilet after a morning poop. That is the situation of more than 940 million people in the world, who live off the power grid, meaning they either self-produce their needed energy or they don’t require it at all.
Journalist Jonathan Taggart and cinema producer Phillip Vannini explored the way of living, their challenges, and stories from more than 200 off-grid Canadians in an ethnography called Off the Grid: Re-Assembling Domestic Life. Their work interprets, contextualizes, and questions our “modern, on-grid way of life” through thirteen chapters that focus on different topics and territories of Canada.
Why is electricity a feminist issue?
Emancipating from power structures is the feminist apothegm. As the authors of this ethnography argue, gird systems rely upon a concentration of politico-economical power with consequences for the costs and control of their utilization. For instance, electricity prices in Europe rising tremendously since Russia’s war on Ukraine, –while energy and fossil fuel companies’ profits are being tripled– might be an outcome.
The current energy model reflects the social model. As mainly caregivers and care workers, women are disproportionately impacted by climate change and the lack of access to power. Systems with fixed connections, along with patriarchal norms of wealth distribution, result in limited participation of women in terms of deciding on which appliances to obtain and use.
Another example of power inequality is found in some communities of India and Kenya, where women-headed households –especially widow and divorced women– are less likely to have energy access than men-headed houses, according to the International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy (ENERGIA). Yet the same study reveals that just because a community has access to electricity, doesn’t mean gender equality comes alongside. This is explained in the rooted (and historical) gender norms and cultural means of the majority of societies today.
Energy for whom and for what?
For some people, living off-the-grid has been a choice; a luxurious escape from big polluted cities into the quiet –and often, harsh– the natural world. Yet the means, the physical effort, and the technical knowledge required to move from the cash-flowing cities to natural resource-flowing paradises are quite at stake.
On the contrary, many other off-griders never face this decision. Aside from some Indigenous People’s traditional and cultural way of living –which implies living off-grid–, lots of rural communities around the world are challenged with unequal electrification systems due to political and economical policies.
Another reason for off-griders to choose the self-supply path is rooted in the over-dependence patterns in which grid systems hook their users, resulting in the global exploitation of natural and often, nonrenewable resources. By that, people prioritize their well-being and biodiversity, rather than profit and unlimited growth. Just like the feminist economy has long been committed to putting sustainability at the center of any project, and as the alternative to market productivity.
Anyhow, producing your own electricity comes with its struggles. It doesn’t only mean spending more time in the obtention of heat, water, and light – whereas in on-grid accommodations they’re obtained in seconds–, but it also requires a supply of physical effort too. As the authors defend, in off-gird houses, “everyday living is an ensemble of tasks and goals, carried out in relation to the resources and tools available, as well as our practical orientations and skills”.
Rather than involving mainly maintenance and care work for the self-sufficient housing infrastructure, generating electricity can get as exercising as having to run a sports bike to watch TV or to dig up an entire pond to canalize some water to make your DIY hydro-turbine work. This is one of the main reasons why most people living off-grid, even if they are alone, tend to co-habit in ‘green’ communities.
Into a new paradigm
Off-girders live in connection with the environment and climate; since their activities are sustainable (and if powered, self-supplied), and their power-producing activities depend, most times, on weather and natural resources. Take for instance sun-powered housing, hydropower systems, or biodiesel-powered systems.
Disconnecting from the grid doesn’t mean getting disconnected from the world, –even if it usually means a getaway ticket far from big cosmopolitan cities. Oddly –and to break the hermit or the hippie myth, as the authors would refer– off-girders connect, not just with the environment and climate, but it’s also with society and their communities. Most off-gird houses interviewed by Vannini and Taggart had an internet connection or cable TV, and even though they had to save energy to do such activities, they argued, it was almost a basic need.
Now, there’s a difference in how we believe things are ought to be and how they really are. Deciding to “quit the system” and buying thousand-euro solar panels that produce more electricity than needed when clouds allow it, seems like a contradictory plan.
On the other hand, gender norms on care work have an influence in off-grid housing too. The division of labor found in different households interviewed by Vannini and Taggart shows how patriarchal norms also define some lifestyles of off-girders; just as it defines some on-grid households' lives.
Ending the care crises starts with recognizing the importance of the people who take care of those tasks, whether it’s in a self-supplied power household or in one connected to the grid. And that imperative comes with the acknowledgment of Indigenous People’s leadership and support to their capacity in renewable power-producing.
Is it the magical solution?
After reading this book, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that off-grid learnings might be the feminist solution to unequal power distribution and a sustainable future. Off-gridding can teach sustainability, ethics, basic mechanical work, and responsible consumption, but as the authors defend in this ethnography, it’s not the magical solution for the global energy crises.
Living off-grid is a new way of thinking, is being aware of the real cost of things. It’s an awakening that leads to a change of lifestyle; it’s being aware that the world has spun out of control and advocating for its preservation rather than destruction. The lessons we can learn from off-grid living are the “lessons we will all need to learn tomorrow to make our lives more sustainable, more respectful towards the environment, and less dependent on non-renewable resources”.
Going off-gird is somewhat a repairing metamorphosis. The meaning of power changes when it’s self-produced: it becomes the innate ability to do work. But even when emancipating from power structures in order to self-supply may be the feminist choice at a local scale; the global energy transition has to come with gender-perspective policies and studies, in order not to enlarge existing inequalities; and in furtherance of sustainability.
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