Gender equality outcomes are often omitted instead of being integrated into just transition initiatives. Financial innovations are needed to support the realisation of gender equality while meeting investment goals.
Webinar in March
This will be addressed in March this year during a webinar hosted by the GGKP Gender Expert Group and the Green Finance Platform. The theme is Financing Pathways for Gender-Just Energy Transitions. At the same time, a report on powering a gender-just energy transition will share key take-aways and discuss the challenges, opportunities and experiences for financing gender-just interventions.
Greening the Planet in Just Transitions
The energy sector is mostly dominated by a male workforce, impacting women and men differently by the climate crisis and energy poverty. Transitioning towards low-emission and resilient pathways requires fundamental shifts in how energy is produced.
The concept of Just Transitions as stated in the Paris Agreement refers to the greening of economies in fair, inclusive and gender-just ways. However, gender equality outcomes are generally omitted from just transition initiatives, especially for large scale investments. Financial innovations could support the realisation of gender equality in energy transitions while simultaneously meeting investment goals. More tools are urgently needed to integrate gender-just outcomes in climate action.
The Gender Expert Group’s report – Powering a Gender-Just Energy Transition-, will not only discuss challenges and opportunities for inclusive energy investments, but also provides a framework for doing so.
Background
The GGKP Gender Expert Group convenes leading experts in green growth and gender with the aim of catalysing collective action towards gender equality and women’s empowerment in global green transitions. A collaborative project among leading green growth organisations, provides research, capacity building and knowledge sharing to address critical knowledge gaps and aid evidence-based policy development processes while integrating gender equality in green growth approaches.
About GGKP
The Green Growth Knowledge Partnership’s (GGKP) Gender Expert Group was established two years ago to catalyse collective action towards gender equality and female empowerment during transitions to green, low-emission economies. The aim is to build a collaborative platform within and among leading policy, industry and finance experts and institutions, including civil society and women’s organisations, engaged in and defining green economy transformations.
The Gender Expert Group provides research, capacity building and knowledge sharing to aid evidence-based policy development processes, specifically on integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment in green growth approaches. The Group also identifies and responds to critical knowledge and data gaps, sharing and upscaling of best practices while facilitating peer-to-peer learning and capacity building.
Featured Reports
A report on gender equality and informality in low-carbon transitions is a review of evidence to identify transformative outcomes, identifying
gender equality outcome domains, (spheres of action and change,) where the transformative potential of just transition pathways can be assessed and strengthened.
Another report – Gender Ambition in Climate Policies – provides an in-depth application of the gender-just transitions outcomes framework. It analyses the role of gender justice in climate policies and delves into the nexus between just transitions and gender ambition, providing a better understanding the level of gender ambition in existing policies. It is specifically applied to public policy and select project-level case studies such as those in Burkina Faso, Saint Luci, and Colombia.
Other reports include:
- Tracking Increase in Women’s Employment in the Renewable Energy Sector Under NDC Targets;
- Gender Integration in Renewable Energy Policy: A guideline for renewable energy policy and decision makers;
- Informality and Inclusive Green Growth;
- Beyond Covid-19: A Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice;
- Gender and Renewable Energy: Entry Points for Women’s Livelihoods and Employment;
- Green Recovery for Practitioners: Fiscal Policies for a Sustainable, Inclusive and Resilient Transformation;
- Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development: The Gender Dimension;
- Development Finance for Gender-Responsive Climate Action;
- Women for Sustainable Energy: Strategies to Foster Women’s Talent for Transformational Change and
- Inclusion Matters: Policy Insights and Lessons from the Green Economy Coalition’s National Dialogues
Exactly one year ago, the framework of the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the United Nations (UN) Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), together with UN Women, Finland, the Energia International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy and the Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition (GWNET), co-hosted a side event entitled The Gender and Energy Compact: Catalyzing action for a just, inclusive and gender-responsive energy transition.
This Compact places women and gender equality at the centre of the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7: ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
The climate crisis has a disproportionate impact on women and girls. At the same time, women have less access to energy suffer more from energy poverty and energy services than men. There is a clear need for a gender-responsive energy transition, shifting from economies dependent on fossil fuels to those which are low-emission and climate-resilient, while putting women and girls at the centre of decision-taking and policymaking. If the world is to achieve SDG7 by 2030, women must be part of the energy transition at all levels.
“Not everything that is green is just” – Milagros de Camps, Vice Minister for International Cooperation at the Dominican Republic’s Ministry for Environment and Natural Resources
De Camps said women will not benefit from green job creation unless the current occupational segregation and gender norms are addressed. But it is not only about jobs. “A just transition is ultimately about people and communities,” said Katri Viinika, Ambassador for Gender Equality at Finland‘s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Just Financing for Africa
Everjoice Win, Director of the Shine Campaign, is working with development actors, private sector entities and faith-based organisations to provide blended financing towards energy access for communities in Africa and India. It is essential, she says, that women define their needs themselves, explain how they can contribute as entrepreneurs and sit at the decision-making table. Without a doubt, women’s empowerment and access to clean energy go hand-in-hand. One simply can’t be achieved without the other.
The signatories of the Gender and Energy Compact, committed to supporting and accelerating action towards a just, inclusive and gender-equal energy transition, include the governments of Canada, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Iceland, Kenya, Nepal and Sweden, as well as USAID/Power Africa and more than 50 public and private sector entities.
The coalition aims to take action towards eliminating energy, drudgery and time poverty of women thereby increasing women’s access to and control over sustainable energy. Other areas these governments identified include the
adoption and reformulation of gender-responsive energy policies and strategies, increased access of women-owned and -led businesses to productive resources (e.g. finance, entrepreneurship and business development services), as well as career advancement, decent and productive employment, enabling workplaces and decision-making power for women in the energy field. Lastly the collaboration is also committed to generation and accessibility of high-quality knowledge, mechanisms, tools and sex-disaggregated data.
