This year, the UN’s theme for International Women’s Day is Count Her In: Invest In Women, Accelerate Progress. UN Women Australia says “Women’s economic empowerment is central to a gender equal world. When women are given equal opportunities to earn, learn and lead – entire communities thrive” , which is especially important in the context of energy transition. A truly “just” transition must consider gender equity.
Worldwide, women and girls are disproportionately unable to access adequate healthcare, are denied education and face significant gender-based violence and discrimination. As the climate crisis worsens, women will struggle further as energy poverty, natural disasters and forced migration entrench existing inequalities. At CIET, our researchers are working to accelerate the energy transition and build a new, clean energy future.
A key element of this is ensuring that we do not reproduce the inequalities that plague our current societal systems and structures, including gender inequality. This International Women’s Day, we are highlighting some of the excellent research undertaken by CIET researchers that plays an important role in informing a just transition.
Professor Petra Tschakert (Theme Lead: Energy Humanities) has conductive extensive research in this area. Her article Emancipatory spaces: Opportunities for (re)negotiating gendered subjectivities and enhancing adaptive capacities (Garcia et al. 2021) investigates the opportunities and possibilities in rural Ghana for (dis)empowered groups, especially women, to contest and renegotiate power relations through periods of significant change, such as the energy transition. Professor Tschakert, Alicea Garcia (University of Western Australia) and Nana Afia Karikari (University of Cape Coast) continue to build on these findings in their article Sustaining Hierarchies: A Cross-Level and Cross-Scale Analysis of Power, Politics, and Dominant Discourse in Adaptive Decision Making (2023) Their study finds that power hierarchies and relations must be subject to nuanced and intersectional examination if climate change adaptation is to be equitable. The process of climate change adaption requires negotiation and considering which groups (often women) are excluded or under prioritised, as highlighted by this study.
Professor Nigar Sultana (Theme Lead: ESG, carbon and natural capital accounting) is particularly interested in gender equity on corporate boards. Her article Do Gender Diversity Recommendations in Corporate Governance Codes Matter? Evidence from Audit Committees (Sultana, Cahan, and Rahman 2020) provides insights into the role of gender in financial reporting. The study finds that female audit committee members improve financial reporting/auditing quality. However, the study also finds evidence of tokenism after the ASX Gender Diversity Guidelines were introduced in Australia in 2010. Her research reinforces the importance of commitment to authentic gender representation and the role women have to play in accelerating progress in the financial sector.
Professor Sultana’s other research includes investigating the role of women leaders in the energy transition. In a working paper yet to be published, Professor Sultana, Associate Professor Harjinder Singh (Curtin University) and Dr Pallab Biswas (University of Otago, NZ) draw on international data from 46 countries to find a positive association between the presence of female leaders on corporate boards and their commitment to renewable energy consumption. The relationship is more pronounced in Oceania and European countries followed by North America.
In another study currently under review, Professor Sultana, Associate Professor Singh, Dr Biswas and Professor Ellie Chapple (Queensland University of Technology) examine the relationship between gender diversity on corporate boards and commitment to UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Their analyses reveal that gender-diverse boards are associated with greater levels of SDG disclosures with such commitment more significant when there is more than one woman on the board. They also find that women board members are associated most with the “society” and “environment” groups within the SDGs.
Professor Helen Cabalu (Theme Lead: Energy Markets) is also currently collaborating with the University of Pretoria (South Africa) to develop studies on the intersections between gender, policy and energy. This collaboration aims to produce a meta-analysis of gender equity trends as explained by gender policy initiatives in both Australia and Africa, and also examine gender and energy poverty in both countries.
Works cited
- Garcia, Alicea, Petra Tschakert, Nana Afia Karikari, Simon Mariwah, and Martin Bosompem. 2021. “Emancipatory Spaces: Opportunities for (Re)Negotiating Gendered Subjectivities and Enhancing Adaptive Capacities.” Geoforum 119 (February): 190–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.09.018.
- Garcia, Alicea, Petra Tschakert, and Nana Afia Karikari. 2023. “Sustaining Hierarchies: A Cross-Level and Cross-Scale Analysis of Power, Politics, and Dominant Discourse in Adaptive Decision Making.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, September, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2023.2243316.
- Sultana, Nigar, Steven F. Cahan, and Asheq Rahman. 2020. “Do Gender Diversity Recommendations in Corporate Governance Codes Matter? Evidence From Audit Committees.” Auditing-a Journal of Practice & Theory 39 (1): 173–97. https://doi.org/10.2308/ajpt-52560.