Future employment

Who loses, who profits?

Today, the emphasis is on creating green jobs in the construction, transport, technology, and science sectors—which are examples of rather male-dominated sectors. Investments, grants, solutions, and new jobs created as a result of transitions in environmental and climate matters will therefore serve the interests of men more if nothing is done in employment affairs.

When it comes to employment transition to due to environmental and climate change, it is important to analyze from the outset whom the transformation will benefit: who will get these new jobs that will be created, who will get the best paid jobs, and who will lose their jobs? As green jobs and their development are rather new, this should give the public sector a certain amount of freedom to emphasize industries that have not been subject to as much attention in the discussion, such as care work.

Care work forms the backbone of society. Women are a great majority of those working in care jobs, and this industry is considered a low-carbon and greenhouse-gas-emissions industry. These are jobs that are indispensable, and therefore emphasis should be on developing and improving the working conditions of these jobs even further in connection with the green economy, as more and more people need care and daycare for children enables people to attend work. It’s possible to develop and train people for care work, who are working in jobs that are vulnerable because of green transition. However, that development must be based on fairness and just conditions.

Jobs in manufacturing, services, retail and tourism are expected to be particularly vulnerable to automation. These jobs tend to require little formal education, and men in low-education jobs are rather at risk than women of losing their jobs, along with immigrants and young people in temporary low-income jobs. Immigrants are on average paid almost 8% less than non-immigrants when adjusted for the main demographic and employment-related factors in Iceland. Results also show that immigrants have on average lower wages than non-immigrants with the same level of education, and the conditioned wage difference is between 11-15%.  

Employers' ideas about which individuals are "desirable" employees for certain jobs are important, and gender, origin and other factors have an impact. A summary of data from 140 countries included in the UN Gender Equality Index indicates that there is a correlation between increased gender equality, economic growth, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. This suggests that the social aspect of the green transition is just as important as the financial aspect for environmental and climate success.

Jobs in repair services - the circular economy

Repair services could become an important industry to combat climate change as well as support the circular economy. The goal of the circular economy is to prevent resources from becoming waste, among other things by improving the lifespan and durability of goods and materials. This could prevent overproduction of goods and unnecessary purchases. These jobs would also support a just transition in environmental and climate matters, as it is important to create diverse jobs to replace those that will be lost because of the green transition.

Retraining and skill based training could be useful for such industries, in particular for people who have to change careers due to changing government priorities for employment and those who find it more difficult to access secure work, such as people with a low level of education, people of foreign origin or other marginalized groups. An increased focus on repair services would be beneficial to consumers in the form of lower expenses.

However, it is important to promote increased awareness among the public about the importance of repairing and fixing instead of buying new and increasing public access to repair services at a fair price. The European Union has worked towards increasing consumers’ right to have their products repaired, improve access to spare parts and consumers’ access to fix their own products.

There is, however, a possibility that repair services could promote traditional gender roles if there is no particular attention paid when promoting these professions, since women are more likely to repair and adapt clothing while men more frequently repair cars and all kinds of appliances.

Jobs in transportation and construction

Jobs that prioritize sustainability and focus on the development of environmentally friendly solutions are generally attractive to women. Jobs that are more closely associated with men, such as engineering and construction work, with this focus, could therefore attract more women to those sectors.

Research also indicates that when the number of women in construction jobs increases, more emphasis is generally placed on environmentally friendly practices.

An analysis that was made of two important sectors of employment for the green economy in Canada; transportation and construction. The analysis showed that, in general, there was little information about the participation of women in these professions, and because of this, among other things, companies and institutions had not taken gender and equality perspectives into account when restructuring these industries for the green economy.

It was also found that it was easier for workers already employed in these sectors to be trained in more environmentally friendly practices and changes than to train people who were not used to these jobs or who were new to them.

Women constituted the majority of those who had never worked in these jobs, and the professions had not taken this into account when transforming these jobs.