Transforming Gendered Interrelations of Power and Inequalities for Just Energy Systems

Project Information

gEneSys

Grant agreement ID: 101094326

DOI

10.3030/101094326

Project closed

EC signature date 13 December 2022

Start date 1 February 2023

End date 30 April 2026

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 2 656 488,75

EU contribution

€ 2 656 488,75

Coordinated by

CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - gEneSys (Transforming Gendered Interrelations of Power and Inequalities for Just Energy Systems)

Reporting period: 2023-02-01 to 2024-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The EU decarbonisation targets to reach climate neutrality by 2050 are ambitious. Ensuring the transition to carbon neutrality is just and fair is challenging. The EU-funded gEneSys project will focus on the gender and social inequalities in energy transition policies. Even though there are no gender indicators or targets in the Agenda 2030's SDG7, “access” and “affordable” are concepts that hide a multitude of power and gender inequality relations. As such, the project conceptualises energy transition as a gendered socio-technical innovation ecosystem emerging out of the interplay between the technological, policy, social, environmental, governance and economic subsystems. To integrate the gender perspective into each of these sub-systems, gEneSys will analyse the related sustainability visions, values and priorities, as well as the change actors and stakeholders. The project contributes to: 1) Achieve a better understanding of gendered power relations for which it will assemble the evidence base with theoretical underpinnings and gendered analysis of power relations in the social, economic, environmental, governance and technological spheres of energy transition; 2) Help reverse socio-economic and cultural inequalities affecting women in particular by demonstrating how to a) advance more women to participate in and influence the processes and outcomes of energy transition; b) integrate gender perspective into implementations of SDGs, and c) show how applying gender lens to knowledge on energy transition can help achieve equitable, fair and just energy transition outcomes.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

gEneSys has assembled the evidence base of gendered power relations in the social, economic, environmental, governance and technological spheres of energy transition by:

a) performing a systematic literature review of the scientific publications tackling the gender-energy nexus and of the grey literature looking into this nexus in order to get an overview of the multi-dimensional nature of the topic, the emergent patterns in different world’s regions and sub-sectors and the extant research gaps to be further explored (see T1.1);
b) analysing the gaps in knowledge communities tacking the energy transition through looking closely into the networks of the authors of scientific publications on this theme and by launching a survey targeting R&I staff working on energy issues in academic/research institutions and private companies (D1.3. in progress) (see task 1.3 and 1.5)
c) analysing science curricula in secondary and high schools in partners’ countries to unveil unequal gender representation in textbooks and other school materials (see task 3.1.)
d) examining the intersectional aspects in gender-power relations in the energy sector by developing an analytical model, distributing a survey/performing interviews with citizens in 10 countries and developing a theoretical framework with experts.
e) showing the lack of consideration of gender aspects in the literature concerning renewable energy system (see energy system ontology, T1.2.) and in the recovery and resilience plans of EU member states (see T1.4).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

So far, the gEneSys project has extended the evidence base for a better understanding of the gendered aspects of the energy transition. In particular:

- It systematized existing scientific evidence by identifying clusters and sub-clusters relevant to understand the gender-energy transition nexus;
- It created a comprehensive ontology of energy systems related to the energy transition and, by doing so, it unveiled the lack of consideration of the gender dimensions;
- It performed a policy analysis of the recovery and resilience plans of EU member states to unveil to what extent and how the gender dimension was represented and gender disparities were accounted for;
- It reviewed EU-Africa cooperation programmes to advance energy transition;
- It performed a SNA of the knowledge communities’ networks in the energy transition (e.g. the networks of authors of scientific publications on the topic), making evident gender inequalities in knowledge production
- It performed an in-depth analysis of the representation of the gender-energy nexus in middle and high school’s textbooks related to science curricula, again showing the lack of consideration of the gender dimensions

This extensive evidence base will be disseminated in relevant scientific and policy venues and it is expected to boost evidence-based actions toward reversing gender disparities in the energy transition. Specifically the project has identified a number of areas of interventions that will need to be further explored by future research and targeted by policy measures.

genesys logo