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.
Across sectors and countries, work must be done to increase the proportion of green jobs held by women and ensure the quality of these jobs. How should this be achieved? By overcoming barriers to greater female participation in the workforce through the removal of obstacles by means of anti-discriminatory, family-friendly policies, hiring female staff for non-traditional jobs through special programmes and quotas, providing specialised training programmes for green jobs, reducing gender-based job segmentation and gender wage gaps and redoubling efforts to unionise women in these potential sectors.
In addition to general information, the study also includes experiences and initiatives in several different countries and sectors where the positive results of pro-active policies can be seen, as well as some of the challenges posed. Some examples include women working in the forestry industry in India, the construction sector in the United States, ecotourism in Costa Rica and the women in the photovoltaic industry in southern Italy.