The study comprises four assessments in the sectors energy, building and construction, agriculture and waste management. Provided is a general overview of the sectors, the related policies and legislations and the available and planned financing and investments. Furthermore, the assessments allowed estimating the number of potential green jobs that can be created if green policies relevant to the different sectors are implemented.
The publication is a result of the February 2013 workshop organised by the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) partners LIFE and GENANET, together with the German Ministry of Environment, in Berlin. The aim of the workshop was to discuss how women’s unpaid work and care economy can be incorporated into sustainable development to achieve gender justice. Different voices and perspectives, from scholars and activists from the global North and South, discussed the growing concern about the emergent terminology of “green economy” in development agendas that ignore its social and environment dimensions.
Long-term projections suggest that without policy changes, the continuation of business-as-usual economic growth and development will have serious impacts on natural resources and the ecosystem services on which human well-being depends. This highlights the necessity for both developed and developing countries to move to a new growth path that is consistent with the protection of the environment and a sustainable use of scarce natural resources, while still achieving sizeable gains in living standards and reducing poverty...
The purpose of the study is threefold:
(1) to shed more light on the gender dimension of green growth, especially in the context of private sector development and thereby fill an important knowledge gap in the green growth discourse;
(2) to validate women’s contributions to green growth and sustainable private sector development; and
(3) ultimately to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality.
The overall approach of the study combines three intersecting perspectives, which are dealt with independently as well as in tandem: a gender perspective with a focus on the (potential) participation of women, a greening perspective and a private sector development perspective.
The study contains case studies from Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Philippines, South Africa, Uganda and Vietnam.
Green jobs represent a new kind of employment which is not yet caught in the history and inertia of social inequity. This could represent an opportunity for a more equitable sharing of revenue between capital and labour. This opportunity may also help women into career path’s that will allow them to become more financially secure and support themselves and their families.
The recent study undertaken falls into this type of combined exercise, demanding a change towards a sustainable production model, and at the same time shedding light on what kind of jobs should be defended and which should not, and which policies to promote or reject. The paper sets the challenge of analysing and putting forward proposals for discussion from working women, advancing towards a gender perspective, as other studies on green jobs have included little or no reference to women workers.