Exploring the Target Audience of Green Jobs

Exploring the Target Audience of Green Jobs

In the transition towards a low-carbon society, the creation of green jobs in male-dominated industries like energy and construction risks perpetuating gender inequality. To address this issue, concerted efforts are being made to promote gender equality in these sectors.

Key initiatives include the GGGI Gender and Social Inclusion Strategy 2021-2025, which focuses on inclusive green growth, ensuring the meaningful participation of women, equal access to benefits, and social safeguards throughout green job creation processes. This strategy integrates gender equality with poverty eradication, human rights, and just transition principles, ensuring marginalized groups, especially women, are not left behind in green economic transformations.

Addressing the gender imbalance in vocational and technical education and training (VET) is another crucial aspect. Countries like Finland are providing targeted guidance and policies to support women's entry into male-dominated green occupations such as energy and construction. Despite gender gaps in these sectors, government policies aimed at carbon neutrality stimulate demand for labor, opening opportunities for women while recognizing they may face skills gaps that require educational and training interventions.

Global initiatives, including those aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 (Gender Equality), highlight the essential role of gender equality for sustainable development. These initiatives call for political leadership, investment, and reforms to dismantle systemic barriers, such as the lack of women in managerial and leadership roles in male-dominated industries including green sectors.

Organizations like UNICEF are working to bridge the green skills gender gap by preparing girls and young women for green jobs through education in STEM, leadership, and skills development.

If care workers were valued as highly as engineers, there may not be a gender imbalance in either workforce to begin with, according to Erin Mansell of the Women's Budget Group. Investment in the care sector could create millions of well-paid, unionized, low-carbon jobs for women and marginalized groups, as stated by the FGND.

In the solar industry, women account for 58% of those employed in administrative jobs compared with less than a third of those in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) positions. In the wind industry, women represent only 21% of the workforce, lower even than in oil and gas. There are no official statistics on the presence and experiences of LGBTQIA+ people in "green" sectors.

The argument for investing in care belongs to a global ecosystem of feminist, queer, and decolonial activism at the intersection of climate change and economic justice. Overhauling the global financial architecture and redressing unequal-and often colonial-power relations between countries in the Global North and in the Global South is necessary, according to Rachel Noble, a senior policy advisor in Women's Economic Justice at Oxfam.

Neha Mankani, a midwife and climate activist, notes that environmental degradation affects all aspects of the lives of the mothers and babies she treats in her clinic in Baba Island, Pakistan. She advocates for midwifery to be prioritized as a critical and low-carbon method of care during climate emergencies.

Green jobs are a focus of policymakers' climate and green infrastructure packages, such as Biden's American Climate Corps and the Inflation Reduction Act. However, efforts to promote gender equality in these sectors are seen as important for a just transition to a low-carbon society.

References: [1] GGGI Gender and Social Inclusion Strategy 2021-2025 [2] Finnish Government Policy Brief: Women in Green Jobs [3] UN Women: Gender Equality for Sustainable Development [4] UNICEF: Bridging the Green Skills Gender Gap [5] Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal (FGND)

1. The GGGI Gender and Social Inclusion Strategy 2021-2025 emphasizes inclusive green growth, promoting gender equality in sectors like energy and construction.
2. Global magazines focusing on lifestyle, fashion-and-beauty, food-and-drink, home-and-garden, business, personal-finance, technology, relationships, education-and-self-development, and career-development should highlight the importance of gender parity in green job creation.
3. Despite women accounting for less than a third of STEM positions in the solar and wind industries, organizations like UNICEF are working to prepare girls and young women for green jobs.
4. The lack of women in managerial and leadership roles in male-dominated industries, including green sectors, is a systemic barrier that requires political leadership, investment, and reforms.
5. In the solar and wind industries, women are more represented in administrative jobs compared to STEM positions, reflecting a need for increased education and training in these areas.
6. Erin Mansell of the Women's Budget Group argues that if care workers were valued as highly as engineers, there may not be a gender imbalance in either workforce.
7. Investment in the care sector could create millions of well-paid, unionized, low-carbon jobs for women and marginalized groups, as stated by the FGND, bridging the gender gap in such industries.
8. Neha Mankani, a midwife and climate activist, advocates for prioritizing midwifery as a low-carbon and critical method of care during climate emergencies.
9. Climate change and economic justice intersect in the global ecosystem of feminist, queer, and decolonial activism, as overhauling the financial architecture and redressing unequal power relations is necessary.
10. Policymakers' climate and green infrastructure packages, like Biden's American Climate Corps and the Inflation Reduction Act, should prioritize promoting gender equality in green jobs for a just transition to a low-carbon society.

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