Greening unequal? Conceptualising the impacts of the green transition from a global gendered lens

This paper presents a conceptual framework for an integrated global, sectoral and gendered analysis of the macroeconomic and social dimensions of the green transition with a focus on three critical aspects. The first concerns the uneven global effects of the green transition. Due to differentiated sectoral structures and positions in the global financial architecture, the transition has highly uneven effects across countries: interconnected global production and financial networks can result in the green transition in the Global North having important adverse macrofinancial effects on Global South countries, particularly those reliant on fossil fuel exports, raising climate justice concerns. The second refers to the environmental footprint of green structural change that extends well beyond direct emissions: resource-intensive green activities, such as electric vehicle production, drive ecological degradation through supply chains in Global South producer countries and reinforce green extractivism, making adaptation and the protection of water, land, and biodiversity central for a just green transition. The third is related to the gendered effects of the transition, which can either intensify or reduce existing inequalities through the impact of the green transition on women’s paid and unpaid work. These effects diverge between North and South due to differences in labour informality, exposure to environmental degradation, and the gender composition of ‘green’, ‘fossil’, and ‘purple’ sectors. Drawing on post-Keynesian, ecological, and feminist macroeconomics, as well as the physical and monetary input-output approaches, the paper develops a framework that emphasises international and sectoral spillover effects, macrofinancial channels and the local-specific gendered effects of green policies through paid and unpaid work. Based on this framework, the paper outlines how the combined use of green and purple policies can reduce global, sectoral and gender inequalities.