Women across Europe are disproportionately vulnerable to energy poverty, a result of pervasive societal gender inequalities, such as lower incomes and unequal care responsibilities, whilst being underrepresented in decision-making spheres. Furthermore, pressures on social housing have seen more low-income families pushed into low quality, costly and precarious housing in the private rented sector (PRS), increasing exposure to energy poverty. Although recently gaining some recognition at the EU-level, gender-just measures to improve energy efficiency and alleviate energy poverty, particularly within the PRS, remain inadequate at all levels of policymaking, with energy policy continuing to be designed in a “gender-blind” manner. However, neglecting the impact of gender inequalities and housing tenure upon vulnerability to energy poverty will likely hinder the achievement of a just energy transition.
This paper uses a multi-method approach, encompassing an in-depth critical review of academic and grey literature, an analysis of existing European energy efficiency policies aimed at the PRS, and a scoping survey of 54 stakeholders, to unpack how gender is currently addressed in policy and the implications for alleviating energy poverty in Europe. Our results show that gender is extremely poorly understood and tackled by existing policies across Europe: a mere 2.5 % of analysed policies mentioned gender, one third of which are energy advice measures, which do not tackle the systemic underlying causes of energy poverty.
Only 6 % of survey respondents believed that gender was currently adequately addressed in existing policies, with female respondents more likely to rate policies as poor or very poor. Identified policy barriers that contribute to this situation include a dearth of disaggregated data, a widespread lack of awareness of the gendered impacts of energy poverty, poor gender-mainstreaming practices, and the inaccessibility and untargeted nature of current efficiency measures. Based on these barriers, we conclude by synthesising key policy recommendations which could foster the deployment of more gender-just energy efficiency policies in the European PRS.