The second Thursday of COP29, 21 November, was Gender Day. The conference was drawing to a close, but, at last, a light was shone on the issue of gender equality.
Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) decided to extend the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender for a second decade. Established in 2014, this programme encourages the use of data to actively make climate action – specifically, the work of implementing the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement – gender-balanced. It also provides a roadmap for producing the parties’ new Gender Action Plan, in time for the COP30 summit in Brazil next year.
Gender has become a more common issue in climate change-related negotiations in recent years, with 81.5% of UNFCCC signatories mentioning gender in their Nationally Determined Contributions. A consensus is forming around the need to achieve gender equality and women’s participation and empowerment during action on climate change.
However, the renewable energy sector, which is key to the current energy and climate crises, remains dominated by men. In China, though the sector provides a huge number of jobs, the percentage of women in these roles has been falling. They also face various barriers in the sector, including a lack of career progression.
Experts consulted by Dialogue Earth at COP29 say that, despite scant official policy, businesses could nevertheless take action to help reduce gender imbalances, such as disclosing gender data in environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports. These experiences in the business world could then inform government policy.
Renewables: more women needed
The renewables sector is booming. According to a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), the global renewables workforce expanded by 18% in 2023 to 16.2 million jobs, up from 13.7 million in 2022. China is the sector’s biggest employer, accounting for about 7.4 million (46%) of those jobs; almost two-thirds of solar and wind power capacity added globally in 2023 was in China.
On the first day of COP29, China held a side event on women in sustainable development, where a new report from the NGO China Sustainability Tribune, “Insights and Corporate Practices of Women’s Empowerment in Climate Action”, was released. Hu Wenjuan, the editor of the China Sustainability Tribune and one of the report’s authors, told Dialogue Earth that the traditional energy industry has always been dominated by men, and this will be hard to change. But as an emerging industry, renewable energy provides a valuable opportunity to promote gender equality.
According to data from Irena published in 2019, women accounted for 32% of renewable energy employment globally – better than the energy sector as a whole, at 22%.
The energy sector in China is doing slightly better than the global average: according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, in 2019, 27.1% of the sector’s employees were women. In March 2024, a report from recruitment website Liepin said 30-35% of employees in China’s renewables sector were women.
Equality beyond numbers
Globally, there is an ever-increasing shortage of “green” talent. This has led to concerns about the speed of the energy transition. The same story is playing out in China: there aren’t enough people with green skills to fill the expanding number of jobs. According to multiple energy company representatives who talked to China’s The Paper in November, this shortage needs to be resolved as soon as possible.
What’s critical is identifying the root causes of women’s underrepresentation, and eliminating those barriers to ensure that women have equal access to opportunitiesAnika Heckwolf, a policy fellow working on climate action and international finance at the London School of Economics
Job opportunities created by the energy transition should benefit both men and women equally, says Anika Heckwolf, a policy fellow working on climate action and international finance at the London School of Economics. She adds: “Women, as half of the global population, are an essential force that cannot be overlooked in the process of the energy transition.”
But while the percentage of women in the workforce is important, gender equality is not just about aiming for a 50% target, Heckwolf notes: “What’s more critical is identifying the root causes of women’s underrepresentation, and eliminating those barriers to ensure that women have equal access to opportunities.”
It is not simply a matter of overall numbers. The types of jobs women do, and their presence in management roles, are also factors. According to renewable energy sector data from Liepin, technical vacancies, such as those in engineering or research and development, tend to be filled by men. Women commonly fill roles in marketing and human resources departments, which usually pay less.
According to UN Women, women undertake the majority of low-paid, low-skill jobs, and so are at greater risk of losing their jobs. Women in part-time or temporary jobs are often the first to be laid off when companies hit hard times, such as at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic – making them 19% more likely to lose their jobs than men.
Change starts with data
Heckwolf says that at COP28, there was a call to action by UN Women on one very practical matter: the need to improve the gathering and use of gender-disaggregated data, which is crucial for driving and measuring progress. “Without data segmented by gender, taking meaningful action can become more challenging,” she says.
Overall gender balance in the workforce is a standard part of ESG reporting frameworks, and more and more firms are publishing such reports. As such, the availability of gender data from Chinese companies is improving. Yuan Ziqi, an independent consultant and writer, analysed over 1,000 Chinese ESG reports and discovered that, on average, the representation of women was shrinking across the board. In particular, Yuan noted a jump in workforce sizes among solar power firms between 2022 and 2023, yet the percentage of women in the photovoltaic workforce fell – by more than the average.
Companies are increasingly expected to devise and report upon environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards. These three areas aim to cover what the professional services network Deloitte defines as: “all the non-financial risks and opportunities inherent to a company’s day-to-day activities”.
The principle behind ESG is that companies do not exist solely for the generation of profits. Every company is a collection of people who have the potential and responsibility to protect and nourish the environment, prioritise human wellbeing, and govern themselves ethically.
ESG reporting differs from company to company, but the relevant data is typically gathered and added to annual reports or presented as a separate sustainability report.
A requirement was put in place this year for 457 listed firms in China to start ESG reporting by April 2026.
“Statutory disclosures are a start, but the companies should ask what the point of the data is,” says Yuan. The consultant has observed many Chinese firms taking equality in the boardroom more seriously because diversity is more visible there. Some firms have gone further, by starting to separate out gender data into executive, managerial and frontline roles.
LONGi, a multinational solar photovoltaics company headquartered in Xi’an, central China, is one such firm. It publishes detailed gender data on its website, which shows that as of end-2023, 20,000 of its 75,000 employees were female. Women represented 10% of engineers, 20% of senior managers, 21% of junior managers and 25% of “income-generation” roles, such as sales.
Heckwolf notes that while better data is important, data shortfalls do not excuse failure to act.
Chinese firms take action
Promoting gender equality is not just about social responsibility – it can also be profitable. Analysis from the International Labour Organization found that gender balance in the boardroom makes a company “almost 20% more likely to have enhanced business outcomes”. Pilot studies of small- and medium-sized enterprises and clean energy value chains found that an overall gender inclusion strategy can improve sales by up to 85%.
More time is needed to confirm that these findings carry through to actual practice. Molly Huang, secretary general of the Women in Renewables Alliance, tells Dialogue Earth that promoting gender balance relies on awareness and support at the executive level. If the board does not take gender equality seriously, change will not happen on the ground.
At China’s COP29 side event on women in sustainable development, two subsidiaries of China’s State Grid presented their experiences of implementing women-friendly practices. These included setting up women’s committees, encouraging women engineers to take part in innovation, and providing more development opportunities. During her speech, Hu Wenjuan said that, in a fiercely competitive market, more and more firms are keen to showcase the actions they are taking on gender issues, both for reasons of brand marketing and social responsibility.
Another driver is coming from the gender requirements of international projects. For example, a green hydrogen project by the International Hydrogen Fuel Cell Association, funded by the Global Environmental Facility and taking place in China, stipulates that at least 30% of its workforce must be women. External pressures like these may push Chinese firms to take more positive action on gender issues.
Hu points out that firms that are becoming more international must pay attention to how their gender balance reflects their brand image. This also creates more jobs for women, both in China and overseas.
As early as 2018, there have been reports on how Chinese investment in Ethiopia has boosted employment of women and improved their status in many parts of Africa. At the unveiling of the Beijing Action Plan for 2025-2027 during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), participants reaffirmed China’s industrialisation training support for people across the continent, particularly through capacity-building training for women and youth.
China’s ever-expanding portfolio of overseas renewable energy projects presents a fresh opportunity to promote gender equality. Chinese firms that choose to take the lead on this could go some way to cultivating a just global energy transition.
