W4RES Capacity building for gender mainstreaming in the RHC sector: A WECF’s webinar series on how to engage and integrate more women into the RHC sector

Within the scope of the capacity building program measures, WECF organised and delivered a first series of 5 webinars with the aim to strengthen the capacities of international stakeholders of the Renewable Heating and Cooling (RHC) sector to foster women empowerment initiatives and adoption of gender mainstreaming approaches.

Here find the outputs and recording of our webinars program:

Webinar n°1 - Overcoming the invisible barrier: Gender dimensions of the RHC sector

The aim of the first webinar on gender dimensions was to lay a foundation for acknowledging the difference between various genders, gendered roles, gender-specific barriers, and needs in the RHC sector. While presenting gender tools for overcoming gender-specific barriers, it was important for WECF to include the participants and create an interactive event. Hence, participants shared their experiences with their own barriers and challenges in the RHC sector.

Also, the program aimed to strengthen participants' capacities and answer to their specific interests and needs so, with some light questions and polling, they have been invited to choose the tools to be developed on the last webinar through a poll.

Find the recording of the webinar n°1 here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcZpLQiymxg&t=2523s

Webinar n°2 - Gender tool: Gender-self assessment & Gender action plan for RHC actors

On June 15, 2022, WECF continued the series for capacity building on gender mainstreaming and women empowerment in the renewable heating and cooling (RHC) sector. Participants were introduced to two tools guiding them toward a gender-responsive workplace in the RHC sector. First, they were introduced to the concept of Gender-self assessment (GSA), a step-by-step guideline with some examples to create questionnaires. The takeaway from the GSA session was the understanding of the type of questions one needs to ask for self-reflection on the status quo of gender within the workplace. After GSA, the next natural step was to introduce the concept of the gender action plan, the step-by-step guide to utilize the findings from the analysis, here, in this case, GSA, to propose strategies and monitor the progress in order to become sustainable.

In the second half of the webinar, the participants were divided into 3 groups and each group was given a chance to brainstorm ideas to develop strategies to reach their goals, identify their resources, and define their timeline for implementation and monitoring. Hence creating a short version of the Gender Action Plan to take away.

Find the recording here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUlo9Qkj5Mo

Webinar n°3 – Gender-responsive communication in RHC sector

Should we use the word “first language” instead of “mother tongue”, or “workforce” instead of “manpower”? Put pictures of active women on a company´s website to recruit more women as employees? Avoid gender stereotypes in regard to technical aspects when talking to customers & beneficiaries? During this webinar on 5th July 2022, WECF raised some of these questions to elaborate together with the participants on how to reach a more gender-just RHC sector via communication.

The webinar started with presenting the aim of gender-just communication. Communication is necessary for our daily life – while communicating we try to understand each other, each other´s background and each other´s perspective. Even more so, communication shapes our perception of the world, our behaviour, and social roles. Languages have evolved by mainly representing a male gaze. Therefore, it´s not surprising that many languages are built upon the so-called generic masculine. To challenge this norm, during the past years, a debate about the “gendering” of languages has grown mainly regarding German, French and Spanish but also in regard to other languages.

During the webinar, the WECF team has not only presented examples of verbal but also about paralinguistic and non-verbal communication, e.g., body language or photos. It was explained that the words, pictures, or expressions we use convey a certain message and that this message should always be inclusive and free of stereotypes. A possibility to pursue more gender-just communication as an actor within the RHC sector is to avoid such stereotypical images on external communication channels (webpage, presentations, brochures). For example, instead of depicting only men as technical experts, women can be pictured while installing a heat pump or explaining the technical details of a project.

Find the recording of webinar 3 here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ar7U1QBT6U&t=2s

Webinar n°4 - Supporting energy communities and gender-just energy communities

On the 7th of September 2022, WECF gave insights and tools on how to make an energy community more gender-just. It was further complemented by the inspiring experiences of two speakers: Alice Corovessi (WEncoop) and Stefan Gsänger (WWEA).

Firstly, WECF introduced the concept of energy communities. We define an energy community as a wide range of collective energy actions (can be any project or initiative) involving citizens' participation in energy systems. Per definition and by the principles that energy communities are carrying (inclusivity, democracy and equal participation) they imply gender equality. However, they are still seen as a male activity and improvements are still needed. Priority is not always given to engaging more women and gender equality due to a lack of resources awareness and not understanding the need of it.

Thus, WECF presented the relevance and positive impacts of gender-just energy communities (less inequality, powering the energy transition, empowering society transformation as a whole). This section ended with tools for creating your own gender-just energy community. For example, gender analysis, active recruitment or gender-inclusive communication.

With the knowledge of what an energy community is, Alice Corovessi provided us with her experiences of the Greek Association of Women Entrepreneurs and WEnCoop. WEncoop is the first Energy Female Social Cooperative for women entrepreneurs and their businesses in Greece. She spoke about the challenges she encountered while creating WEncoop and how they overcame them. The purpose for their members was to be able to operate in the energy sector, utilizing pure energy sources, reducing the cost of their business and increasing their family income. One point that came out is that training is essential to unify a community with members with the same levels of awareness and skills.

Lastly, Stefan Gsänger spoke about the recent study conducted by World Wind Energy Association on how to engage more women in energy communities. Providing us with interesting figures about the challenges that females may face. Some interesting numbers were showing that this is not by a lack of interest that women are not getting more engaged in energy communities but rather due to a lack of financial opportunities or a lack of information. Indeed, often ahead of the creation of the community women are lacking in male-dominated networks where discussions and the project arise!

Find the recording here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzd5h4p-Fps

Webinar n°5 - How to empower women in the RHC sector: what concrete actions are available?

During the last webinar of this series, on 21st September 2022, WECF showed why we need to establish a shift in the mindset. We see that gender stereotypes are still being reproduced, despite efforts to avoid this. EU policies such as the Green Deal are still gender-blind. Moreover, we need to be aware that some policies do evolve and mainstream gender but technologies can unintentionally be masculine, leading to the reproduction of inequalities. WECF also emphasized the fact that gender equality is the responsibility of men, women and all genders. Because only focusing on women would remove men’s share of taking equal responsibility to deliver gender equality, and this would result in the further reproduction of such inequalities.

This shows the need for concrete measures to shift these mindsets! Therefore, WECF focused on concrete actions available to achieve the empowerment of women in the RHC sector. The three tools that were discussed during the webinar were: 1. Mentoring coaching and networking, 2. Women empowerment training, and 3. Active women recruitment.

In mentoring/coaching and networking segment Katharina Habersbrunner, (WECF) shared her experiences and stories as a mentor from GWNET mentoring program with the participants. Furthermore, we presented a list of different networks, mentoring and role models programs that participants can easily get access to.

In addition, we suggested among our network a list of gender trainers that participants can reach out.

The webinar ended with Wolfgang Köhler-Naumann, head of the supervisory board of the ‘Bürger Energie Bremen eE’ cooperative sharing his experience in recruiting women for the supervisory board. This cooperative was established in 2014 and now has 300 members approximately. The board of members and supervisory board were completely male-dominant. To achieve better gender equality, after several refusals from women to join the boards (with reasons like too many formalities, not being willing to join a male-dominated board, etc.), they offer women a four-month program, consisting of information sessions (e.g. on energy communities, missions of a board or supervisory board member, self-confidence in energy communities, etc). At the end of the program, the women were asked if they would join the (supervisory) board. The result was very successful, and 5 women applied for a supervisory board position!

Find the recording here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aT7Z-dbrow

Our results?

A lot of experience and knowledge sharing and very insightful moments for us as WECF, and we hope for all participants! We want to thank all external experts for giving inspiring inputs as well as all participants who made the webinar to become an interactive and fruitful exchange. In total, 194 registrants from 30 different countries were reached by the five webinars.

N°	Webinars	Date	Participants
1	Overcoming the invisible barrier: Gender-dimensions of the RHC sector	31 May 2022	47
2	Gender tool: Gender-self assessment & Gender action plan for RHC actors	15 June 2022	46
3	Gender-responsive communication in RHC sector	5 July 2022	21
4	Supporting energy communities and gender-just energy communities	7 September 2022	49
5	How to empower women in the RHC sector: what concrete actions are available?	21 September 2022	42

Share women	Share non-binary	Share men	Share not disclosed	Number of countries reached
54%	1%	12%	33%	30

The next series of 5 webinars will start in December 2022. Stay tuned!!  https://www.wecf.org/de/w4res/