For the benefits of the green transition to be evenly spread, we must tackle the gender disparity in those roles, says Matt Farquharson.

It is a good time to have ‘sustainability’ on your CV. Last week at The Conduit, LinkedIn’s Kate O’Sullivan revealed new data of a global boom.

With figures gleaned from LinkedIn’s nearly one billion global users, she told us that demand for green jobs grew twice as quickly as supply last year.

And that those with any kind of green skills were hired 55% faster than those without.

Most of these roles are white collar, and have ‘sustainability’ or ‘environment’ in the title: the analysts, co-ordinators and managers making best use of precious resources.

But there are swathes of technical roles out there, too: the World Economic Forum expects a net gain of 10 million green jobs across the auto and energy industries by 2030.

And in the US, the University of Massachusetts reckons the Inflation Reduction Act will add nine million jobs over a decade, more than half from clean energy.

Last year, $1.7 trillion was invested globally in clean energy. By 2030, that is expected to top $2 trillion – double the fossil fuel investment.

There is profit to be made in saving the planet.

But it will not be evenly distributed.

Because those energy jobs – mostly well-paid, technical roles – will overwhelmingly go to men.

Data from media firm the Fuller Project and Revelio Labs found that clean energy jobs mirror the fossil fuel roles they are replacing. Some 70% of jobs in these industries – green and not – are currently held by men. The Fuller Project reports that at NextEra Energy – the largest solar tech company in the US – only 24% of the 15,000-strong workforce is female.

The reasons for such disparities are well known – too few female graduates in STEM subjects, a lack of visibility of female role models in these sectors – and the solutions are well known and often repeated.

We need more active promotion of STEM careers and qualification to girls and young women, better support for mothers returning to work, better parental leave for non-birth partners, more visibility for organisations such as STEM Women and Women in STEM.

But progress is too slow. In the UK, for example, the proportion of female and non-binary graduates from STEM degrees has crept up barely two percentage points over the last decade, currently sitting at 27%.

Increasing the supply of talent into these areas takes a significant cultural shift, and it is not happening quickly enough.

But there are ways to even out the gender disparity in new green jobs, and it can be found in those statistics from LinkedIn. Within the world of corporate sustainability, women are much better represented. In 2011, according to Weinreb Group, 72% of CSOs were men. By 2020, more than half of those jobs were held by women, and this figure broadly cascades through the sustainability ranks.

And, as sustainability climbs the corporate agenda, more of these roles are being created. At Davos last year, 60 CSOs attended, more than 60% of them women. At Davos in 2018, only 20 CSOs were present. As Ellie Besley-Gould, director with sustainability consultants Xynteo told the Green Jobs Revolution last week, “Without wanting to be too provocative, it seems to be one of the roles where women are allowed to be in the C-suite”.

And to get there, she said, requires, “having pretty sharp elbows. It’s muscling in to the commercial discussions of the business”.

Sustainability as a function of business is going through a similar process to HR two decades ago. What was once purely transactional – sort the sick pay, mark attendance – slowly became more strategic and vital to business growth. Few serious larger firms now cope without some kind of chief people officer.

So it might be time for businesses to ask where sustainability sits for them. Is it a mid-senior level box-ticking and reporting function, or does it play a strategic role at the heart of your business?

For firms that can answer ‘yes’ to the latter, the benefits of the green jobs boom may be more fairly shared. Watch the talks and panels from the Green Jobs Revolution here.