Promoting gender justice in the transition to renewable energy | Report on the event

Last Thursday 25 March, GI-ESCR jointly with AIDA and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation (FES) co-hosted a side-event at the 65th session of the Commission on the Status of Women Forum (CSW65)on ‘Promoting Gender Justice in the Transition to Renewable Energy’. It gathered women’s rights activists, experts, and organization to share experiences, learn and collectively identify ways forward for a gender-just energy transition.

The event provided a space for women’s rights organizations, community members and activists working in several countries around the world, particularly in the Global South, to share their views and lessons learned from their work on the ground with women who have been affected by energy transition policies and projects. The event shed light on how we can continue building a movement to promote a gender-just and rights-based transition to green energy.

The event was moderated by our Executive Director and Former Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona. She initiated the discussion with an interactive exercise where participants shared their views on the importance of ensuring the participation of women in the energy transition.

Building on the audience’s feedback, Magdalena reflected on how the general extractive fossil fuel model has been gender-blind, ignoring women’s energy needs and the impact of gender roles and intersectional discrimination in energy policy frameworks and energy production.

“It is only with women’s knowledge, experience, and effective participation in policy making and in the development of renewable energy projects that we will be able to fully take advantage of the transformative power of the green-energy revolution.”
- Magdalena Sepúlveda.

Three main activists working on the intersections between climate action, energy and human rights then shared their insights with around 70 participants.

Ms Irene Gonzalez Pijuan from Engineers without Boarders (Spain) shared that her organization has drafted and promoted a Municipal manifesto with an ecofeminist perspective to inform policy at the local level. She highlighted that, due to unequal gender roles, women tend to rely more on energy at the household level to perform care and domestic work. Data demonstrate, she highlighted, that single mothers, women pensioners, and migrant women are the ones most at risk of experiencing the worst effects of energy poverty.

“We need gender disaggregated data to understand how the current energy model affects women.”
- Irene Gonzalez

Beth Roberts from Landesa reflected on how the territories and natural resources of women in local and indigenous communities have suffered disproportionately from the negative impacts due to the change in land use in the context of the transition to renewable energy. Land and land governance matter for a just transition to renewable energy, as land is central to power relations that underpin gender inequality, on the one hand, and because the transition to renewable energy tends to be land-intensive, on the other, she explained. Without safe and secure land tenure rights, women do not have the possibility to fully and effectively participate in renewable energy projects that directly impact their livelihoods.

Liliana Availa from AIDA recalled that the participation of women in renewable energy projects is possible, underlining that her organisation has documented promising renewable energy projects which involve small scale hydroelectric power plants providing electricity for local community members.

“Alternative small- scale and community- led models allow a better representation of women in the construction and operation phases of renewable energy projects.”

In contrast, current renewable energy models often replicate harmful practices of the fossil fuel industry, she added. She shared the testimony of Maria Bautista, a Mayan-Chuj indigenous woman from the community of Yulchen Frontera in Guatemala, whose community has suffered from the severe impacts of the construction of a large hydroelectric complex in the region.

Watch Maria Bautista’s testimony:

Paulina Montes de Oca from ProDESC shared another case study related to the development of large-scale renewable projects in Unión Hidalgo, Mexico and its gender implications for the local indigenous population in the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

“Of the approximately 500 people participating in the indigenous consultation process only 5% were women. This is consequence of several factors, but all too often women of the community suffer from gender-based violence, which create unsafe environments and incapacitating conditions for them to engage and participate in decision-making processes.”

Due to this situation, a group of women from the community have formed the Committee of Women in Defence of Life to foster dialogue to gradually transform the patriarchal structures that halt’s women’s possibilities to participate and be heard in the consultation process.

Watch testimony of community members of Unión Hidalgo, Mexico, on French energy company Electricité de France (EDF) abuses of human rights: