Public Services International, the global union representing public service workers, including those essential for climate action and for fostering caring societies, calls on the international community and all levels of government to support a transformational, feminist, just, and equitable transition.

The climate crisis is gendered.  Women bear a disproportionate brunt of the impact of climate disasters, displacement, and migration while enduring energy poverty, care burden and climate-related loss and damage.

 A 'greener’ version of neoliberalism won’t address the structural causes of either climate change or gender inequality. 

The concept of just transition must have broader applications, including changing the sexual division of labour and re-valuing women’s work and feminised sectors, such as care and health.

 We must shape a transition:

•  That addresses the intersecting crises of the pandemic, the climate, and the growing inequalities.

• That provides opportunities to change the current sexual division of labour, promoting decent work, including union rights, and the regularisation of informal jobs, for women of the world and increasing gender-transformative quality public services.

• That leads to the public ownership of the production, transmission, distribution, and control of energy, based on the principles of energy democracy, where women have full political capacity and representation to make decisions

• That ensures all levels of government have adequate and predictable gender-responsive financing to meet the needs of people and planet, funded by reforms of international and national tax regulations and the sustainable solution of the sovereign debt crisis.

So far, the CSW has been on track during the negotiation rounds on the Agreed Conclusions, and we welcome: 

• The human rights-based approach as it will provide congruence between the impacts of climate change and the responses needed, centring the responsibility on States.

• The paragraphs on Participation, Just Transition and Resilience which refer to transforming the social organisation of care as a main driver of change. The ILO 5Rs framework on recognition, reduction, redistribution, and representation needs to be maintained and reinforced by reclaiming care as a human right.