On 14 July 2021, GI-ESCR organised a side-event with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and Oxfam Mexico on Women’s Participation in the Renewable Energy Transition at the 47th session of the Human Rights Council, with the additional collaboration of our partners EmpowerMed, AIDA and ProDESC. Bringing together experts, activists and practitioners working in the fields of energy, climate change, and women’s rights to share their experiences working with communities at grassroots level, this policy dialogue, sharing knowledge and mutual learning event helped bridge knowledge gaps and promote future visions for renewable energy.

The event aimed to share their experiences on the ground and foster mutual learning on gender-just energy transitions as well as strengthen the links between experts, activists and other practitioners to promote network building and policy development aiming to achieve gender equitable outcomes in energy interventions.

This policy dialogue, sharing knowledge and mutual learning event allowed UN experts members of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls in Law and in Practice and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to establish an engaging and rich dialogue with activists and civil society organisations advocating for a feminist and rights-based energy transition.

On the one hand, UN experts had the opportunity to deepen their understanding on the energy transition as a key human rights and gender equality issue, deriving analysis from experiences of women at the community level; on the other hand, the representatives of civil society organisations had the opportunity to learn more about how they can collaborate with international human rights mechanisms and mobilise around international human rights norms and instruments to advance key policy recommendations and persuade States to mainstream gender in their energy transition policies and frameworks.

The event also allowed to further unpack how we can use renewable energies to combat climate change and structural conditions of gender discrimination to keep building momentum, articulate join advocacy strategies and advance a feminist transition to low carbon societies.

KEY Speakers

Part I: Experiences on the ground

Moderator: Alexandra Haas, Executive Director Oxfam Mexico

• Irene Giner-Reichl, Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition

• Debajit Palit, Energy and Resource Institute

• Lidija Živčič, EmpowerMed

• Marina Dubois, Geres

Part II: Engagement with Human Rights Treaty Bodies and Mechanisms

Moderator: Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, Executive Director of GI-ESCR and Former Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

• Melissa Upreti, Member of the UN Working Group on the Discrimination Against Women

• Dorothy Estrada-Tank, Member of the UN Working Group on the Discrimination Against Women

• Heisoo Shin, Member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Event summary

Magdalena Sepúlveda, Executive Director of GI-ESCR welcomed participants highlighting the importance of combating climate change with a huma rights-based approach. She mentioned that as the sector of the renewable energy is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years we need to ask fundamental questions, such as:

What are the risks and opportunities green energy presents for women and girls? How can we use the global energy transition to transform economies and societies so as they are more human rights and gender compliant?

Her intervention set the tone for an insightful and rich conversation amongst experts, activists and grassroots organisations working at the local and international level to transform energy systems to protect the environment, foster gender equality and the realization of human rights.

“It is fantastic to hear about good practices to advance gender-just transitions to low carbon economies, because that allows us to tell States how change looks like and how it can happen. It is clear that this is a human rights issue and that it is connected with several social movements related to food, labour, health and education, as well as the rights of specific groups and minorities.”

Melissa Upreti, expert member of the Working Group on Discrimination of Women and Girls in Law and in Practice.

All speakers agreed that the energy transition is a deep societal transformation which implies a lot more than a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The scale and scope of the energy transition is so significant that it touches many key aspects of everyday life.

Irene Giner-Reichl from the Global Women’s Network on the Energy Transition reflected that it is very positive for the society at large, the environment and to promote social development, if energy transitions can draw on all available talent, including that of women that are so far greatly underrepresented in the energy sector.

Debajit Palit, from TERI explained the multiplying benefits of ensuring women’s access to energy and to electric appliances in their households. The livelihoods of women were significantly improved by reducing the care and domestic work burdens that are mostly performed by women. Electric appliances, for instance, allow women to save time and reduce the drudgery of cooking and cleaning. It also allows for greater mobility, to have communication devices, and participate in decision-making. Dr. Palit highlighted that the new and emerging narratives on gender and energy clearly identifies the meaningful role women can play as ‘change agents’ along multiple segments of the energy value chain as energy users, business owners, service providers and policy makers.

Among participants and speakers there was a general consensus on the challenges faced in mainstreaming gender in energy policies. Participants highlighted the structural barriers that women face to participate in decision-making due to pervasive negative gender roles and stereotypes. One of them, is that some stakeholders see no need for the differentiation of men and women in energy policies and frameworks. We need more affirmative action to achieve more equitable outcomes for women.

Lidija Živčič from EmpowerMed explained that structural gender-related inequalities result in women and households led by women being disproportionately affected by domestic energy deprivation. In this light, EmpowerMed aims to empower women affected by energy poverty to trigger transformative change in domestic energy use practices and to replicate exemplary cases of gendered local energy poverty alleviation approaches. Lidija explained the diverse set of multidisciplinary strategies that the nine organisations members of the project have implemented at the community level to foster women’s participation in the solution of energy poverty. Building spaces for women according to their needs and considering their care roles to detonate the conversation and have peer to peer exchanges on the challenges they face has been a key feature of the programme.

“International Human Rights Law gives us different entry points through different human rights instruments to address these key issues. There is a whole set of norms, standards and principles that can direct us and provide guidance on how should a just transition to renewable energy and low carbon societies should look like. An intersectional approach to clearly understand how this transition impacts women across the lines of ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation is also essential to ensure we fully understand the implications of this global transition.”

Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, expert member of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls in Law and in Practice

In relation to combating gender stereotypes, Marina Dubois from Geres also highlighted that if we want technology to fit the needs of women and communities, we need to engage women in decision-making. Promoting and supporting women who can act as “role models” for others often inspire the women in certain communities to take part in decision-making spaces, also mobilising men and providing them with information on how families and the whole community could greatly benefit from women’s participation and engagement in these decision-making processes can have a very positive impact and improve women’s status in their communities.

“The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is in the process of developing a new General Comment on Sustainable Development, we invite organizations to contribute to this process and participate sending relevant information to ensure the key questions relevant to the energy transition and women’s rights are included to bridge the gaps in legal protection.”

Heisoo Shin, expert member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

See the full programme of the event here.

With the collaboration of the following partner organisations: