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As the green transition accelerates, are women in the front seat? Tatiana Vedeneva is a role model in the renewable energy sector in Kyrgyzstan.
As the world races toward a low-carbon future, the promise of the green economy is front and centre - new industries, new jobs, new skills. This is a familiar story in a new shade of green.
Green skills-the technical skills, knowledge, abilities, and values required to develop and support sustainable social, economic and environmental progress-are at the core of this transition. STEM skills, including data analysis, environmental and ecosystem management, and engineering serve as the foundation for emerging green jobs.
Throughout history, every major transformation has consistently left women behind, especially women navigating unpaid care work burdens, limited access to skilling opportunities or entrenched social expectations.
Now, as the green transition accelerates, we have an opportunity to learn from the past and finally ask: Will this be a transformation that includes everyone, or just another missed chance?
In the hope of finding answers, UNDP’s Istanbul Regional Hub and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have been studying the access women have to green jobs in Europe and Central Asia . A troubling trend is already emerging: although demand for green and STEM-related skills is growing rapidly, women are being employed in less than one-third of those positions.
But this goes deeper than job openings.
This is about an entire system that begins with unequal access to STEM education, continues through unpaid care burdens, and results in missed opportunities for women to lead in high-growth sectors.
The analysis reveals that not only do men currently dominate green jobs, but women also already working in polluting or “brown” jobs face far greater challenges when trying to make the transition. In some countries, over 60 percent of women in polluting industries face major barriers transitioning into green roles. Across all countries studied, women are significantly more likely than men to struggle when shifting into green jobs due to skills mismatches and wage penalties. For example, women who don't have skills that match the higher paying green jobs are sometimes forced to take lower-skill jobs than their current brown jobs and therefore get paid less.
In Georgia, 58.3% of women in brown jobs are at risk of struggling to make the transition due to skills gaps. This rises to 61.6% with the potential wage loss factored in.
In Serbia, the comparable figure is 42.1% for skills gap and 47.9% with skills and wages combined.
This highlights the urgent need for gender-responsive, sector-specific reskilling programs.particularly in industries where the transition requires entirely new skill sets and where wage drops make the shift financially risky for women.
Geography also matters. In Georgia, Montenegro, Serbia and Türkiye, women’s green job opportunities are disproportionately concentrated in capital cities, while men benefit from broader access across both urban and rural areas. Unless we expand green infrastructure and training access in rural zones, inclusion will remain limited.
Women’s ability to enter or stay in green jobs is also constrained by a lack of affordable childcare, inflexible work environments and deep-rooted social expectations about who should shoulder unpaid household responsibilities. These factors make it nearly impossible for many women to take on green careers, particularly where full-time or irregular hours are required.
There is, however, a more revealing insight: a disconnect between data and perception.
Despite clear structural barriers and persistent gaps, 43 percent of surveyed businesses in Georgia and 34.8 in Serbia reported that there were no barriers for women in accessing or advancing in STEM and green sectors. This misalignment between market realities and employer perceptions is dangerous, because we can’t solve a problem we refuse to see.
If no action is taken, the green transition could deepen gender inequality—widening wage gaps, narrowing career choices and locking out thousands of women from growing sectors like energy, sustainable infrastructure and green tech.
And it’s not just women who lose. The entire green economy suffers when half the talent pool is sidelined.
But,we can finally design a transformation that doesn’t just change industries but also unlocks growth and innovation by enabling women to access reskilling, secure decent green jobs and balance paid work with caregiving responsibilities.
What are we unpacking next?
Our first report looks at key findings from Georgia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Türkiye. In the full UNDP-OECD study we’ll dive deeper into the gender dynamics of the green transition and close a critical evidence gap in a region where reliable, disaggregated data on women in green jobs is still hard to find.
We will examine four key questions that can help us move to meaningful action:
• How accessible are green jobs for women today ?
• Do women’s existing skills match the demands of the green economy?
• How will the green transition affect women and men differently in the labour market?
• And most importantly—what can policymakers and the private sector do to drive a gender-responsive, truly just transition?
This moment is still ours to shape. Let’s not repeat the same mistakes in a different color.
Stay tuned for the full study release and help us turn insights into action!