When policymakers and climate experts talk about the green jobs revolution, there’s often a focus on ensuring that current oil and gas workers are part of that green transition. That makes sense: The aim for renewable energy is to replace polluting energy sources, and making that transition equitable means not leaving those workers behind.

But some workers are being left behind—and risk losing out on even more. Women are vastly underrepresented when it comes to jobs in the overall energy sector—and are already underrepresented in green jobs. Without efforts to change that, experts say this gender gap could grow even wider. That isn’t just a risk for women, but could harm the world’s transition to a cleaner economy.

Why women are underrepresented in green jobs

According to a recent International Monetary Fund analysis, just 6% of women who work in developed economies have green jobs, while for men, that figure tops 20%. For that analysis, the IMF defined a green job as one that improves environmental sustainability or reduces greenhouse emissions. That could include electrical engineers, EV or solar panel technicians, recycling workers, and so on.

One big reason for that gap, IMF researchers say, is because of the gap in STEM education. Science, technology, math, and engineering skills are essential for the green energy transition. But around the world, women are still underrepresented in STEM fields and education.

In the U.S., women make up the majority of overall college graduates, and account for 53% of STEM degrees at the bachelor level, and 48% at the research doctoral level, according to Pew Research. But when it comes to STEM jobs, their share is much less: as of 2021 data, women made up just about one third (35%) of the U.S. STEM workforce.

The risks of leaving women out of the green jobs transition

Marina Mendes Tavares, a senior economist with the IMF’s research department, was one author of the analysis on green jobs and the gender gap. And she says it’s cause for concern for a few reasons. First is equity: “Instead of having a transition that’s inclusive, where there is participation of both men and women, we have the risk of having a green transition that will propagate these gaps,” she says.

Green jobs also pay more than positions in other sectors: 7% more for men—and 12% for women. That’s according to data from four specific countries: Colombia, Brazil, the U.S. and the United Kingdom. “While these jobs are very good, and they’re very good for women in general, there’s very few women that are participating in that,” Tavares says.

This has clear impacts for the women being left out of that growing sector of the economy. But there are also impacts for the green transition at large. “We find that in economies that have more gender balance and more STEM-educated workers, when they implement climate policies, these policies are more effective in reducing emissions by 2 to 4 percentage points,” she says, “than countries that don’t have the right balance of skills and a more inclusive composition.”

More STEM workers, and a more inclusive workforce overall, means more people are equipped with the skills to speed up green innovation. And it sets countries up to have more effective green policies: if a country puts clean energy policies into place but doesn’t have skilled workers at the ready, that creates “bottlenecks” in the economy, Tavares notes, where it takes more time for that policy to be effective.

How to get more women into green jobs

To close the green jobs gender gap, countries should focus on getting more women into STEM. Some countries have done this, Tavares notes: Over the last 10 years, Ireland tripled the number of women that earn STEM degrees (though men are still the majority).

That country’s approach was “holistic,” Tavares says; STEM education wasn’t limited to just math classes, for example, but integrated into entire curriculums so as to expose more girls to STEM early on. Ireland is also a tech hub, and has public-private partnerships that, for example, allow high schoolers to spend their summers working in tech firms. Those programs target girls in particular, so they can see what sorts of careers are available to women in STEM fields.

“We look at the green transition as something that people care a lot about, and research shows that in particular, women care about the green transition,” Tavares says. “But it’s another thing to understand exactly what are the skills needed to participate and engage with these jobs.”

If countries enact policies to make the general workforce more inclusive, that would also help make the green transition more inclusive—things like parental leave, childcare support, less discrimination, mentorship, and other efforts to generally reduce barriers. As Tavares puts it: “Policies that support women also support women in green jobs.”

When Tavares did this research, she expected a gender gap in green jobs—but she was surprised by just how large it was. It’s an important issue for countries to solve, she adds. “It’s not just about making the transition fair,” she says, “but really about [countries’] reach and objectives, which are to reduce emissions faster.”