📄 social_science

Mapping Gender (In)Justice in the European Green Transition: A Comparative Analysis of Eco-Social Indicators

This study employs a comparative analysis of eleven gender-sensitive indicators across the EU-27 to demonstrate that the European green transition currently reproduces structural gender inequalities in mobility, housing, and labor, revealing that achieving gender justice is contingent upon specific national welfare models and requires a shift toward policies that explicitly address these systemic imbalances.

Original authors: Greta Kraujalytė, Jekaterina Navickė

Published 2026-06-30

📖 6 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Greta Kraujalytė, Jekaterina Navickė

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine the European Green Transition as a massive, city-wide renovation project. The goal is to fix the "house" (the economy and environment) to stop it from leaking energy and polluting the air. The architects (policymakers) have drawn up blueprints focused on technology, efficiency, and saving money.

However, this study argues that the architects made a critical mistake: they designed the new house assuming everyone lives there exactly the same way. They didn't realize that the "house" is actually inhabited by two different groups of people (men and women) who have very different daily routines, budgets, and needs. Because the plans were "gender-blind" (ignoring these differences), the renovation might accidentally make life harder for women while making it easier for men.

Here is a breakdown of the paper's findings using simple analogies:

1. The Three Main Rooms of the Green House

The researchers looked at three specific areas where the green transition hits people's daily lives: Getting Around (Mobility), Where We Live (Housing), and The Jobs We Do (Labor Market).

🚗 Getting Around: The "Car vs. Bus" Divide

The Old Rule: Historically, city transport was built for a "standard worker" who drives a car in a straight line from home to work and back. This is often a man's routine.
The Reality: Women often have a "trip-chaining" routine. They might drive a child to school, go to the grocery store, visit an elderly parent, and then go to work. This is called the "mobility of care."
The Problem: The Green Deal is giving subsidies for electric cars. This helps the "car driver" (mostly men) upgrade their vehicle. But women, who rely more on buses and trains because they can't afford cars or need to stop frequently, get left behind.
The Metaphor: It's like the city is giving everyone a free upgrade to a sports car, but the people who actually need a reliable, flexible bus service to run their errands are told, "Well, you should just buy a sports car too." This creates "transport poverty" for women who can't afford the new car.

🏠 Where We Live: The "Renovation Trap"

The Goal: Fixing old, drafty houses to make them energy-efficient (green) is great for the planet.
The Problem: When a building gets "greened," it often becomes more expensive.
- The Split: If you own the house, you pay for the renovation but get the lower energy bills. If you rent (and women are more likely to be renters or live in lower-quality housing), the landlord might raise the rent to cover the renovation costs, while the energy bills don't drop enough to help.
- The Burden: Women spend more time at home doing unpaid care work. If the house is cold or damp (common in poor housing), they suffer more health issues.
The Metaphor: Imagine a landlord fixes the heating in an apartment building. The landlord raises the rent to pay for the new boiler. The tenants (often women) are now paying more for the same apartment, even though the heat is better. They are "greened" but also "priced out."

💼 The Jobs: The "Two-Track" Economy

The Promise: The green transition will create millions of new jobs.
The Reality: The jobs are split into two very different tracks:
1. The "Hard" Track (Technical): Solar panels, wind turbines, construction, and engineering. These are dominated by men. The education system still pushes men toward these fields.
2. The "Soft" Track (Care): Healthcare, education, and social work. These are essential for a sustainable society but are dominated by women.
The Pay Gap: Even in the "Soft" track where women are the majority, men still get paid more for leadership roles. Meanwhile, the "Hard" track pays well but is hard for women to enter.
The Metaphor: The green economy is like a two-lane highway. The left lane (tech jobs) is wide, fast, and full of men. The right lane (care jobs) is narrow, slow, and full of women. The problem is that the right lane is paved with "gold" (high value to society) but the workers are paid in "copper" (low wages).

2. The Four Neighborhoods (Country Clusters)

The researchers grouped all 27 EU countries into four "neighborhoods" based on how their green transition treats men and women.

The North-Western Neighborhood (e.g., Sweden, Denmark):
- The Vibe: "Egalitarian Pragmatism."
- The Good: They have great public transport and housing, so the daily gaps between men and women are small.
- The Bad: Even here, the "Hard" tech jobs are still mostly for men, and the "Soft" care jobs are mostly for women. They fixed the surface, but the deep structure is still segregated.
The Continental Neighborhood (e.g., Germany, France, Italy):
- The Vibe: "Conservative Compromise."
- The Situation: They have decent welfare systems, but traditional family roles (where men work and women care) are still strong. Women here face a heavy cost burden for housing, even if the houses are being renovated.
The Central-Eastern Neighborhood (e.g., Poland, Czechia, Hungary):
- The Vibe: "Post-Socialist Segregation."
- The Situation: There is a huge gap between men and women. Men dominate the technical green jobs, and women are stuck in care jobs. Women here rely heavily on public transport, which is often aging and not designed for their complex daily trips.
The South-Eastern Neighborhood (e.g., Greece, Bulgaria, Romania):
- The Vibe: "High Risk."
- The Situation: This is the most dangerous zone for gender justice. Women here face the biggest pay gaps and the highest risk of "transport poverty" (not being able to get where they need to go). The green transition here risks making the rich richer and the poor (especially women) much poorer.

The Bottom Line

The paper concludes that you cannot just build a "green" future without checking if it's a "fair" future.

If the Green Deal continues to ignore how men and women live differently, it will act like a magnifying glass: it will take existing inequalities (like men having cars and women relying on buses, or men having high-paying tech jobs and women having low-paying care jobs) and make them bigger and more permanent.

To fix this, the authors say we need to stop using "gender-blind" tools. We need to measure success not just by how many tons of carbon are saved, but by asking: Did this policy help the single mother on the bus? Did it help the female nurse get a living wage? Without these specific questions, the green transition might save the planet but leave half the population behind.

Technical Summary: Mapping Gender (In)Justice in the European Green Transition

Problem Statement
The European Green Transition is frequently evaluated through narrow technocratic or economic lenses, often overlooking the gendered distribution of power and resources. Current policy design frequently employs gender-blind terminology and indicators, which risks reproducing existing social inequalities rather than mitigating them. A critical obstacle to effective, inclusive policymaking is the lack of reliable, gender-disaggregated data. While the intersections of vulnerability and gender are visible in specific spheres, there is a systemic absence of data collection at the EU level necessary to assess the full impact of the Green Deal. Consequently, there is a need to determine whether the transition fosters a gender-just future or entrenches structural imbalances, particularly in domains where environmental and social goals intersect directly with daily life.

Methodology
This study employs a quantitative comparative analysis of eco-social indicators across the 27 EU member states (EU-27). The research integrates eco-feminist and intersectional perspectives to evaluate four identified gender-sensitive domains of the green transition: sustainable mobility, sustainable housing, energy transition, and the green labor market.

Data Sources: Secondary data were extracted from Eurostat and the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) databases.
Indicator Selection: From an initial pool of 15 potential indicators, 11 were selected based on two principles: (i) correspondence to the selected policy domains, and (ii) availability of data disaggregated by gender. The "Energy Transition" domain was excluded from the quantitative analysis due to a lack of individual-level gender-disaggregated indicators meeting the criteria.
Selected Indicators:
- Sustainable Mobility: Frequency of private car use and public transport use.
- Sustainable Housing: Housing cost overburden, prevalence of living in energy-efficient (renovated) dwellings, and prevalence of poor housing quality (dampness, mold).
- Green Labor Market: Employment rates and graduate numbers in technical (STEM) vs. care sectors, and unadjusted gender pay gaps within these sectors.
Analytical Techniques:
- Gender Gap (GG) Calculation: Calculated as $GG = S_m - S_w$ (where $S_m$ and $S_w$ are the percentage shares of men and women). Values were harmonized so that positive values indicate male dominance and negative values indicate female dominance across all indicators.
- Hierarchical Cluster Analysis: Ward's method with squared Euclidean distance was applied to group EU-27 countries based on their gender gap profiles. Variables were standardized (z-score transformation) to ensure comparability. The analysis aimed to empirically test whether these clusters align with established welfare state typologies.

Key Contributions
The paper claims three primary novelties:

Integration of Perspective: It consistently integrates a gender-sensitive and intersectional perspective into eco-social policy studies, a dimension largely absent in previous analyses that relied on gender-blind indicators.
Evaluation Model: It constructs a gender-sensitive eco-social policy evaluation model designed to assess not only the existence of gender-related inequality but also whether such inequality is reproduced through specific eco-social policy measures.
Large-Scale Comparative Data: It conducts a large-scale comparison of all EU-27 member states using systematically disaggregated gender indicators, filling a gap where previous research often focused on general environmental outcomes or lacked systematic data collection.

Results
The analysis reveals systemic gender inequality across the EU, with significant variations in national performance profiles.

Descriptive Findings:
- Mobility: Men dominate private car use (EU average GG +4.1 p.p.), while women show higher dependency on public transport (EU average GG -3.1 p.p.), reflecting "mobility of care" and trip-chaining patterns.
- Housing: Women face higher housing cost overburdens in 23 member states, indicating a link to energy poverty. While gaps in access to renovated housing are small, women are more likely to live in poor-quality housing in 16 states.
- Labor Market: There is profound horizontal segregation. Men dominate technical green sectors (average employment GG +21.4 p.p.), while women are concentrated in care sectors (average employment GG -22.2 p.p.). Despite women's numerical dominance in care, the sector exhibits a significant wage gap favoring men (EU average +13.0 p.p.), indicating vertical segregation and the devaluation of care work.
Cluster Analysis Profiles:
The hierarchical clustering identified four distinct national performance profiles:
1. North-Western Group: Characterized by "egalitarian pragmatism." These countries show the smallest gaps in mobility and housing costs. However, they exhibit persistent horizontal professional segregation in STEM education and labor markets, despite strong social protections.
2. Continental Group: Reflects a "conservative compromise." This group shows moderate gender gaps across all domains. It is characterized by a "male breadwinner" model where care remains privatized within the family, leading to high wage gaps in the care sector.
3. Central-Eastern Group: Marked by high horizontal labor segregation and significant internal variation. These post-socialist states show heavy male dominance in technical sectors and high female dependency on public transport, often linked to aging infrastructure.
4. South-Eastern Group: Exhibits the highest risk profile. This group shows the highest male motorization, the strongest female dependency on public transport (risk of transport poverty), and the largest unadjusted gender pay gaps in the EU (+18.7 p.p. in care sectors).

Significance and Claims
The paper argues that achieving "just sustainability" is deeply contingent upon prevailing welfare state models. The findings suggest that the current trajectory of the European Green Deal risks reproducing existing inequalities rather than resolving them. Specifically, the study claims that:

Gender-blind policy design, such as subsidies for electric vehicles or housing renovations without addressing tenure security, disproportionately benefits men and penalizes women who rely on public transport or rental markets.
The green labor market reinforces historical professional segregation, creating a "fortress of technical masculinity" while devaluing the feminized care economy.
To ensure the transition is environmentally sustainable, socially just, and inclusive, policy design and evaluation indicators must explicitly address structural gender imbalances. The study concludes that without shifting towards policies that recognize and value the care economy and address transport and housing vulnerabilities, the green transition may become a project of new privileges and segregation.