Last Friday 25 March the 66th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) adopted Agreed Conclusions on gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies. The Consensus reached at this year’s Commission gives some hope of a broad-based support to take gender-responsive action to address the climate crisis.
Environmental degradation globally increases inequality. Climate change and related disasters are expected to push an additional 132 million people into extreme poverty by 2030. Women and girls are more affected, in particular those in marginalized situations in developing countries. Women have lower access to resources to adapt and cope with environmental disasters, including land, credit, agricultural inputs, decision-making bodies, technology and training. Women’s disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work intensifies in disaster contexts; increases in women’s and girls’ time and labour spent on fetching water during prolonged droughts is just one stark example. Violence against women worsens in environmental crises that often lead to the breakdown of social services, community and family ties as well as to displacement and migration. Economic coping strategies such as child and forced marriage, school withdrawal and survival sex proliferate.
In the Paris Agreement every country agreed to work together to limit global warming and to adapt to the impacts of a changing climate. Two years later COP23 in Bonn adopted a Gender Action Plan to advance gender-responsive climate action with reference to just transition of the workforce. The climate crisis affects men and women disproportionally, but furthermore, the green transition is not gender neutral. The transition process will result in job creation, substitution, elimination, transformation, and redefinition. Across the globe, women, in addition to having lower labour force participation than men, are significantly underrepresented in sectors predicted to experience green growth. Employment gains associated with the 2°C scenario are likely to create jobs in currently male-dominated industries (renewables, manufacturing and construction). The estimates of the reduction of female employment are to some extent counterbalanced by the assumption that circular economy will benefit jobs in services and therefore will rise the female share of employment and highly skilled jobs. Obviously, this requires women need to have the skills for these jobs.
Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) -related careers are often referred to as the ‘jobs of the future’, driving innovation, inclusive growth and sustainable development. Globally women are under-represented in STEM studies. In 2018 in the EU, women constituted about 28% of university graduates and only 13% of vocational education graduates in STEM. There is some evidence that female STEM students also transit less than men to STEM related occupations (or leave them earlier) after the relevant TVET programme.
It’s not just the “old problem of women and STEM”, it’s about avoiding that greening generates and perpetuates inequalities among men and women. Without a clear recognition of and efforts to narrow the gender gap in terms of sectoral/occupational segregation, there is a high risk that the transition to a green economy will only perpetuate (or worsen) the existing situation. It’s also about ensuring greater labour supply in the highly demanded STEM fields. As the recent JCR Report Future of Jobs is Green states: “Women’s increased participation in technical education is a prerequisite of a successful transition towards green jobs”.
Gender stereotypes regarding professions influence the educational and vocational training choices made by girls, which in turn influences their opportunities for future employment in green jobs. Current efforts to narrow the gender gap in entry, retention and advancement rates in STEM fields could be further reinforced among others by:
- Supporting gender sensitive career guidance, coaching and mentorships to develop realistic but attractive images of STEM and other green careers for females, to make well-informed choices and overcome gender-specific challenges along the educational pathway.
- Collaborating with industry associations in green sectors to develop their own gender-responsive skills development strategies and trainings while ensuring that vocational training is aligned with market demand.
- Collecting longitudinal data that can be used to measure changing patterns of participation and performance of girls and women over time in TVET and in particular STEM-related TVET; the value added by different levels of TVET; and the effectiveness of different interventions aimed at promoting gender equity to trace the trajectories of girls and women through the TVET system and into the labour market.
- Conducting green sector skills needs assessments, supporting collection of sex-disaggregated data on participation in education and VET in key sectors of the green economy and studying the current profile of women’s participation in these sectors.
Green transition could be an opportunity to tackle systemic gender discrimination and enable societies to harvest the benefits of a more diverse economy and gender-responsive skills development has a role to play in it.
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