women

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 5, 2023

La Via Campesina’s 8th International Conference, held in Bogotá, Colombia, after a six-year break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was filled with excitement even before it opened. The conference opened on the 3rd of December, but before that, the Youth Assembly was held on the 1st of December, and the Women’s Assembly, Men Against Patriarchy meeting, and Gender Diversities meeting were held on the 2nd of December. The Men Against Patriarchy meeting and Gender Diversity meeting were held for the first time at La Via Campesina at an international conference and were a great example of how important diversity, equality, and solidarity are to the global peasant movement.

The 5th Youth Assembly, which took place on the first day, was organized under the slogans “Unity in Diversity, Young Peasants Change the World”.

First of all, Pramesh Pokharel from Nepal said, “There are a lot of social movements around the world, but I don’t think there’s one that’s as diversity-oriented as La Via Campesina. We’re here today to talk about the challenges that young people in agriculture and young peasants face in rural communities, and how young people are not able to own land. In particular, at the 5th Assembly, we will be electing youth delegates from each region to strengthen youth leadership. We will also collectively address how to design the agenda.”

By staff - BWI Global Union, March 6, 2022

By Julia Taylor - Just Transition Research Collaborative, March 1, 2023

Most approaches to a just energy transition focus on the impact on jobs and opportunities for new industries, with less attention paid to the informal and unpaid work although it is an integral part of the energy value chain. I have adopted a feminist political economy lens to explore the relationship between the development of renewable energy and gendered labour. This approach highlights the importance of the state, the economy and the household in the process of social reproduction (the reproduction of labour power). It is relevant to debates about a just energy transition because it highlights gender and racial inequalities and the undervalued and unpaid work (often conducted by women) required for social reproduction, which should be addressed in any effort to achieve justice.

A feminist political economy approach to the just energy transition means that I do not only consider whether a job was created, but also the job type (permanent/short-term, wage rate, etc.), working conditions and issues of sexism and racism. I also consider the impact of the shift in energy source for households which struggle with access to affordable energy and other services. Taking a feminist approach meant that I followed a methodology which highlighted a social problem and focused on the voices of those who are commonly marginalized — workers and local communities and particularly women in these groups.

To analyse whether South Africa’s renewable energy procurement programme could be considered part of a just energy transition, I conducted research in the Northern Cape, a rural province of South Africa where solar power plants have been developed around three towns (Kuruman, Kathu and Upington) over the past 10 years. South Africa’s renewable energy procurement programme required private renewable energy producers to take part in a bidding process to sell power to the electricity utility, Eskom. I conducted interviews with local community members, people who had worked on solar plants, solar plant managers/developers and state employees involved in the solar projects, with higher numbers of people interviewed from the groups whose voices are often underrepresented, those of workers and local communities. Despite aiming to interview equal amounts of women and men, or more women, if possible, I interviewed 10 women and 12 men, which may be indicative of the unequal gender representation in the industry. I was able to conduct the interviews with support from two research assistants, Boitumelo Tshetlho and Deon Bezuidenhout, who are local community organizers.

Unfortunately, I found that if the energy transition is carried out at scale in the way that it has occurred in these three towns in the Northern Cape, with privately-owned, utility-scale solar power plants that do not support local access, it will not deliver justice for the poor and working classes.

By Julia Conley - Common Dreams, January 3, 2023

New analysis shows how California "can achieve a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels for oil and gas workers."

A new analysis out Tuesday shows how a just transition towards a green economy in California—one in which workers in the state's fossil fuel industry would be able to find new employment and receive assistance if they're displaced from their jobs—will be "both affordable and achievable," contrary to claims from oil and gas giants and anti-climate lawmakers.

The study published by the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI) notes that a majority of workers in the oil and gas sectors will have numerous new job opportunities as California pushes to become carbon neutral by 2045 with a vow to construct a 100% clean electricity grid and massively reduce oil consumption and production.

"The state will need to modernize its electrical grid and build storage capacity to meet increased demand for electricity," reads the report. "Carbon management techniques, plugging orphan wells, and the development of new energy sources such as geothermal will all come into play, providing economic opportunities to workers and businesses alike."

GEPI analyzed the most recent public labor data, showing that the oil and gas industries in California employed approximately 59,200 people as of 2021 across jobs in production, sales, transportation, legal, and executive departments, among others.

The group examined potential job opportunities for fossil fuel workers "in all growing occupations, not solely in clean energy or green jobs," and found that about two-thirds of employees are likely to find promising opportunities outside of fossil fuel-related work.

"Our findings show that a sizable majority (56%) of current oil and gas workers are highly likely to find jobs in California in another industry in their current occupation, given demand in the broader California economy for workers with their existing skills," the report says.

By Ines Teles, Joana Bergolat and Stefania Barca - Global Climate Jobs, September 19, 2022

By Jessica Kutz - 19th News, August 8, 2022

The investment in climate action from the Inflation Reduction Act will help create millions of jobs. But experts say changes are needed for women to reap those benefits.

Congress is poised to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $369 billion for climate action — what experts are calling the largest investment to combat climate change in U.S. history. It passed the Senate on Sunday and is expected to go to a vote in the House later this week. 

While it still falls short of the $500 billion Democrats were initially seeking for climate action, and includes some giveaways for fossil fuel companies, climate activists on the whole see it as a positive step. It’s expected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030, through tax credits that incentivize solar and wind manufacturing and the production of electric cars, among other provisions. 

The influx of funding to combat climate change will add to the $1 trillion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in November, which laid the groundwork for a clean energy transition through investments in the national grid, clean buses for schools, electric vehicle chargers, access to clean drinking water and public transit. Combined, the two pieces of legislation are predicted to create millions of jobs, many in the trades — for electricians and construction workers — and in the automotive and transportation industries. 

But without recruitment work and industry overhaul, most of those jobs will likely go to men.

According to the latest numbers released by the U.S. Department of Energy, women make up just 25 percent of the energy industry workforce, and when you drill down to where a lot of the job creation will come from in a clean energy transition and in infrastructure upgrades, the numbers look even more bleak. For example, women make up just 4 percent of the construction workforce. 

This is also where the opportunity lies to bring women — particularly women of color, who are disproportionately represented in low-paying jobs — into industries where wages can sustain a family, and where the educational barrier to entry can be low, said Marina Zhavoronkova, a senior fellow for workforce development at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. 

By Lara Skinner, Auburn Bell, Marina Zhavoronkova, Matt Schlobohm, Laura Fortman, et. al. - Cornell ILR Worker Institute, June 29, 2022

By staff - La Via Campesina, March 31, 2022

Through acts of denunciation, activism, education and rebellion, the women of La Via Campesina and around the world commemorated International Working Women’s Day on March 8, 2022. With the motto: Sowing Food Sovereignty and Solidarity, We Harvest Rights and a Dignified life! hundreds of decentralized actions were carried out in the territories.

Outstanding symbolic actions were carried out by organizations in countries such as Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Honduras, Kenya, Tanzania, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India, where rural and city women mobilized and denounced exploitation and oppression under capitalist patriarchy.

Here is a short update:

By staff - La Via Campesina, March 31, 2022

Declaration of working women of La Via Campesina and Allies during the two days’ workshop held at MVIWATA Headquarters, Morogoro, Tanzania

We women, representing our fellow working women from the smallholder farmers’ organizations from 10 countries under the umbrella of La Via Campesina, Political parties and Social movements from various African countries including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, Ghana and Eswatini.

Our two days meeting aimed to advance our struggles and we have identified the following:

1. Despite the differences we have in terms of cultures, geography and environmental conditions, together we have similar challenges that require our unity and solidarity in addressing it including the right to acquire, own and use land, commercialization of women bodies and social services including education, water, and health; the increasing violence against women and children and the general oppression of the working class, especially working women. This manifest itself in various forms of economic, social, physical and psychological.

• These challenges are systemic and are indicative of the system’s failure to recognize and protect working women and their rights in economic, social, political and cultural spheres.

• The existing women and men relationship are the product of a wide-ranging system of exploitation and oppression whose signs and symptoms manifest themselves in the face of increasing sexual violence especially against women, exploitation of one sex by the other, mistrust between the two sexes. The rising assumption that these two sexes are enemies, the collapse of family values ​​and the disintegration of families with the aim of pursuing employment.

• That oppressive systems, hidden within neo-liberal policies and that use a man as a tool to abuse women through patriarchy that manifests itself through various economic, social, cultural and political relations in our society have continued to affect us and our society as a whole.

• Gender-based violence has long and deep roots rooted in the patriarchal system that has been plagued, created and expanded over the years and so the revolution of that system is the solution to violence against women.

• The solution to these challenges is a systematic change to create equal rights that require strategies built through unity and solidarity of peasant women and men, activists and all friends who support the struggle to overthrow the abusive, oppressive and perpetual system of violence against women.