By Professor Roula Inglesi-Lotz of the Department of Economics and the DSTI/NRF SARChI Chair in Just Energy Transition at the University of Pretoria

 

Every August, South Africa honours the women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956. Women’s Month is meant to be more than a commemoration: it is an invitation to ask where women stand today in the sectors that will shape the country’s future. Energy is one of them. As South Africa moves through its just energy transition, away from coal and towards renewables, the question of who gets to build, lead and benefit from that new energy system is not a side issue – it goes to the heart of the matter.

 

The word “just” in “just energy transition” is often read as decoration, a polite qualifier attached to what is really a technical and financial project. It should be read literally instead. A just transition, in the sense the United Nations uses the term, means that the benefits of moving to clean energy (the jobs, skills and investment) and the costs (such as job losses in coal regions) are shared fairly rather than left to fall wherever they may. It is the energy sector’s expression of the UN’s principle for the Sustainable Development Goals: leave no one behind. Judged against that standard, how South Africa’s energy sector treats women is a test of whether the transition deserves to be called “just” at all.

 

The numbers tell an uncomfortable story. According to a 2026 study by Siwela and Shumba, women make up only 14% of employees in South Africa’s renewable energy sector, and about a fifth of the global oil and gas workforce. At Eskom, women account for about 31% of staff; in the coal sector, closer to 21%. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), globally, women hold less than a third of jobs in renewables and just 18% of energy sector leadership roles, up from 13% in 2015. South Africa’s numbers sit comfortably within this pattern of exclusion.

 

What makes this more striking is that the women who do work in the sector are, on average, better qualified than their male colleagues. At Eskom, roughly two-thirds of female employees hold a post-matric qualification, compared with less than half of male employees. The barrier, in other words, isn’t a shortage of capable or educated women – it’s where they end up once they’re through the door.

 

Research on South Africa’s renewable energy sector shows that women are concentrated in administrative and clerical roles, while the better-paid technical, engineering and leadership positions remain overwhelmingly male. This is occupational segregation, and it starts early: women remain a minority in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects that feed into engineering and technical energy careers, a pattern that mirrors – and reinforces – the stereotype that energy jobs are “men’s work”.

 

The issue extends far beyond fairness alone. A 2021 study by the Bank for International Settlements found that every one percentage point increase in women’s share of managerial roles is associated with a measurable reduction in corporate carbon emissions. Separate South African research links rising renewable energy investment directly to increases in female labour force participation, suggesting that the transition itself can be a lever for inclusion – but only if it is designed to be. 

 

Left unmanaged, the shift away from coal risks the opposite: displacing women in coal-dependent communities such as Komati in Mpumalanga, who are already the most exposed to energy poverty and the least consulted in the policies meant to protect them. A transition that leaves these women behind is not just unfair to them; by the UN’s own definition, it fails to be a just transition at all.

 

There are signs of what a better path looks like. The African Women in Energy and Power’s Just Energy Transition Skills Development Programme is training women to lead local-level energy projects rather than simply participate in them. Mpumalanga’s proposed Gender Desk within the provincial Green Cluster Agency aims to map women entrepreneurs and connect them to the resources that the transition is generating. 

 

These are modest interventions relative to the scale of the challenge, but they point to a principle worth taking seriously: gender inclusion cannot be an add-on to South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan. It has to be designed in from the start – in skills programmes, procurement and the boardrooms where transition finance is allocated.

 

The University of Pretoria trains many of the engineers, economists and policy specialists who will carry this transition forward. Women’s Month is a fitting moment to ask tougher questions of ourselves: how many of our energy and engineering graduates are women; how many go on to technical rather than administrative careers; and what are we doing to change that ratio? 

 

A transition that shares its costs and benefits fairly, that leaves no one behind, will not happen by default. Getting more women into the rooms where it is designed is not a favour to women. It is a condition for the transition being just at all.

 

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Pretoria.

 

Professor Roula Inglesi-Lotz