Gender equality must be a central component of a just transition: Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

Over the last decade there has been a dramatic shift towards low carbon energy sources to address climate change. The transition of the energy sector also entails a massive transition to a low carbon economy and society, away from an economic model obsessed with growth which is linked to fossil fuel exploitation and consumption and which has generated extreme inequalities, both horizontal and vertical. The labour movement has called for a ‘just transition’ and this term has been broadened to encompass many social justice issues of the transition.  A just transition must address the gender implications of the energy transition and ensure that women’s rights and voices are at the centre of this vision.

In response to the call for submissions by Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Mr. Oliver De Schutter, for his thematic report on ‘just transition: people in poverty and sustainable development’ GI-ESCR underlines the interlinkages between gender, poverty, and sustainable energy, and highlights some of the important elements that must be considered in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy in order to ensure that this transition does not exacerbate inequalities, but instead advances equality, particularly gender equality.

Why focus on gender equality and the renewable energy transition?

Due to socially construed gender roles, identities, and underlying power dynamics, women and men have different energy needs and differentiated access to energy resources and decision-making processes related to control of energy benefits, sources, and technologies. In addition, the structural gender and economic inequalities are compounded by the disproportionate impact that climate change has on women’s rights. These intersectional effects of economic injustice, climate change, and gender inequality create conditions that profoundly affect women’s abilities to enjoy their fundamental rights and overcome poverty.

In this context GI-ESCR recommends:

• Extending renewable energy access to poor and rural communities will close the gap in energy access, reduce women’s domestic and care work, improve air quality, increase economic and personal development opportunities for women and tackle climate change.

• Promoting and protecting women’s equal land rights and tenure security, in the context of renewable energy projects, is essential to ensuring a just and gender-responsive energy transition. As land is a vital resource providing shelter, housing, food and income, legal rights to land are indispensable to avoiding women’s dispossession and impoverishment. 

• Concerning the labour market, governments and private actors should implement specifically tailored programmes to ensure the inclusion of women in the workforce of the renewable energy sector, by conducting gender audits, tailoring specific education, training and mentorship programmes and networks, providing greater workplace flexibility, and extending finance to promote women’s entrepreneurship.

• Community-based bottom-up models of energy production, distribution and consumption based on principles of a social solidarity economy can create participatory, democratically owned and gender-responsive models to ensure universal access to sustainable energy.