A Feminist European Green Deal

This report utilises an intersectional, ecofeminist analysis to identify gaps in three key areas of the European Green Deal’s policy making: energy, transport and agriculture. The European Green Deal (EGD) remains gender blind to a large extent despite the Von der Leyen Commission’s objective of achieving a Union of Equality. This report makes recommendations on how European Union (EU) policies seeking to reduce carbon emissions must shift from being gender blind to gender transformative policies to deliver better on both climate and equality targets. Putting the question of gender equality into the wider context of the transformation of the EU’s economic system, it suggests a reimagining of the European Green Deal away from being a growth strategy still focused on increasing the volume of the economy (as measured in gross domestic product (GDP growth) towards a true wellbeing economy centred on care for people and the planet. Alongside general tools and recommendations to ensure climate policies increase and do not undermine gender equality (such as the need to collect gender-disaggregated data, systematic gender budgeting, ex ante gender impact assessments, improved strategies to ensure parity in political representation and climate negotiations), the report provides specific, sectoral recommendations for climate-related policies which are currently on the political agenda.

• Resubmit a gender-aware version of the Renovation Wave and Renewable Energy Directive funding scheme that integrates criteria to increase the share of women in the sectors benefiting from it and includes the care sector as one of the beneficiaries.
• Revise the approach of how to make consumers key actors of the energy transition within the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) II with a gender responsive prosumer model, ensuring that women and men participate in and benefit from decentralised concepts.
• Introduce a common definition of energy poverty covering its multifaceted nature and contributing factors, including gender.

• Massively expand the public transport sector with low (eventually zero carbon), fair, affordable, safe and accessible mobility services that benefit all, with particular attention to women’s mobility needs as well as low-income groups and marginalised urban and rural communities (in particular racialised communities), people with other, specific mobility needs (e.g. people with disabilities and older people), and people with a specific need for safety on public transport (e.g. trans and non-binary people).
• Concentrate funding from polluting transport sectors towards clean and public or shared mobility solutions; ban environmentally harmful subsidies such as tax breaks for aviation fuels and public investment in airports or motorways.
• Ensure that investments into public transport and transport policies make it more attractive and easier to shift from individual modes of transport to cheaper and cleaner mobility alternatives such as low or free of cost subscriptions for public transport and stakeholder targeted tariffs, improve service provision (e.g. better service outside peak hours), establish safe and functional cycling infrastructure, and improve accessibility, safety and comfort of transportation modes with particular attention to dimensions of gender and vulnerable people (e. g. better street lighting and awareness raising campaigns).
• Refocus transport policies on sufficiency in mobility by reducing the need for transportation through proximity cities and towns where all essential services are available within a radius of a 15-minute walk which benefits all in society, in particular those with care duties as well as those with less access to mobility.

• Place a ceiling on subsidy payments (e. g., at 60,000 euro per farm) to ensure the EU’s support budget is redistributed to medium-sized and smaller (family-run) farms.
• Include mandatory social and gender equality conditionalities in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to support invisibilised women farmers and undocumented workers. CAP direct payments must be conditional on respect for the applicable working and employment conditions under the relevant collective agreements, national and EU law as well as International Labour Organization (ILO) and UN Conventions.
• Guarantee and increase dedicated support – human resources, technical and financial – to agroecological and organic farming, to young farmers, to women farmers and rural women entrepreneurs and farm labourers.
• Strengthen food security and sustainable rural livelihoods by ensuring fair prices for farmers and sufficient incomes for all consumers; provide technical, financial, and regulatory support and tax incentives to prosumer initiatives.
• Ensure that both agroecological and organic farming practices and gender equality goals are mainstreamed and integrated into the work programmes of all government ministries.

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