Promoting Simultaneous Implementation of SDGs 7 and 5

The study Women for Sustainable Energy: Fostering Women’s Talent for Transformational Change, published by the Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition (GWNET), shows that it can – and indeed needs – to be done.

Energy transitions are under way in many countries and regions. Cities and companies have pledged to go carbon-neutral by specific deadlines. Policies and strategies vary widely, but many have one thing in common – they are not gender-specific.

Currently, women do not participate on an equal footing with men in the energy sector.[1]While figures and methodologies vary (see graph below), the most optimistic figures are that women only make up one third of the sustainable energy labor force. When it comes to STEM or C-suite jobs, percentages are much lower. Lack of attention to this disparity in energy transition policies and strategies risks perpetuating the male/female divide in sustainable energy.

This low participation of women in sustainable energy is a problem because it curtails women’s rights to be fully engaged in all political and economic activity. It is a problem, furthermore, because it has been demonstrated by countless studies[2]that female participation in corporate boards is good for the bottom line by increasing profits, reducing risk, and heightening involvement of the company in sustainability endeavors. Most importantly, however, energy transitions – and the deep societal transformations they entail – require the best available talent and the most diverse work force possible to succeed, especially given the short time available to humanity for transformational change. The current make-up of the work force excludes valuable female viewpoints, experiences, and skills, and this is bad news.

The good news is that many stakeholders – governments, companies, industry associations, academic institutions, and NGOs – are already addressing the issue through a wide variety of strategies. Across the world many stakeholders are implementing a wide variety of strategies to increase diversity and inclusion.

Take for example Rwanda, which has a mandatory minimum gender parity of 30% for all decision-making bodies enshrined in its Constitution. With such strong support to female politicians, Parliamentary elections in 2013 and 2018 elected 60% women MPs, without any changes to the quota.

Turkish company Polat Energy offers another example; it recently signed a $44 million loan to finance Turkey’s largest wind-farm. The loan conditions (interest rates and commissions) are set to improve if the company demonstrates progress towards gender inclusivity against an initially established baseline.

Since launching the Women in Engineering Program in 2014, the University of New South Wales Sydney, in Australia, saw a 78% increase in female first-year engineering enrollments.

Multinational corporation Siemens-Gamesa focusses on flexible work programs and transparency in pay-gap analysis; as a result, the UK government was recently able to certify that, at this company, women earn 95% of what men earn, one of the smallest pay gags measured.

Other leaders in this area include Wind Denmark, who decided to offer more benefits that the country’s already generous parental leave policy for both women and men, and ScottishPower, who champions a dedicated “return-to-work” program for mothers and fathers at the end of parental leave.

GWNET, an international NGO, created the Women in Energy Expert Platform, to support women in the energy sector. With some 1,000 registrations from 90 countries, GWNET runs structured mentoring programs and knowledge-transfer programs for their members. If you are a woman active in sustainable energy and would like to join our network of like-minded women, consider joining us!

For more examples like the ones above, as well as well-sourced analysis and targeted recommendations, please read the GWNET study on how to foster women’s talent for transformational change.