Studies have found that across Europe, household energy consumption varies according to a number of demographic factors, including gender, yet energy policy at pan-European, national and regional levels continues to be designed for a “gender-neutral” energy consumer.
Nevertheless, pervasive gender inequality in society, gendered care responsibilities and household labour, lower incomes and the higher likelihood of being a single parent were identified as key drivers of energy poverty amongst women across Europe. Current policy barriers were highlighted as being a dearth of sex-disaggregated multi-scalar data on gender and energy poverty, a lack of awareness of gender disparities, inaccessibility and untargeted current policy, and a general lack of representation in all areas of policy- and decision-making.
This report combines an in-depth review of academic and grey literature, an analysis of existing energy efficiency policies targeting the Private Rented Sector (PRS) and a primary scoping survey of stakeholders to generate a series of targeted policy recommendations to address the gender dimension in European energy efficiency policy. It should be noted that this report follows the definition of gender put forward by Robinson et al. (2023); gender is not a binary or discrete category, but intersects with and is constructed through “other forms of social difference, such as class, ethnicity, race, disability, sexuality and age”, which shapes social relations in unequal ways (Robinson, Simcock and Petrova, 2023).
The overarching recommendations arising from the report are:
- Policies must address the underlying, structural causes of gender inequality and vulnerability to energy poverty.
- Improved data collection and identification of policy beneficiaries.
- Creating policy that accounts for the needs of women and families.
- Increased accessibility to enhance women’s uptake of energy policies.
- Improved representation of women in the energy sector and in policymaking.
- Integration of energy efficiency policy with measures to tackle other gendered environmental injustices.