WOMEN ARE NOT WAITING TO BE INVITED INTO THE TRANSITION. THEY ARE ALREADY SHAPING IT.

This publication by Neha Saigal brings women’s voices and lived experiences to the centre of India’s energy transition. Through stories from Koraput, Dhanbad, Amritsar, Pune and Rajapalayam, it highlights how women are already driving change—from decentralised renewable energy and alternative livelihoods to clean mobility, innovation and institutional reform. The publication makes a compelling case for a gender-just transition, where women are recognised not simply as beneficiaries, but as leaders and architects of India’s sustainable energy future.

URGENT IMPERATIVES: ADVANCING GENDER EQUALITY IN CLIMATE ACTION

Climate change does not affect everyone equally, and women—particularly those facing poverty and other forms of marginalisation—bear a disproportionate share of its impacts. This paper challenges the dominant, technocratic approaches to climate action and proposes a Gender-Transformative Climate Framework grounded in feminist perspectives and climate justice. It highlights the structural and power inequalities that shape climate vulnerability and calls for women’s leadership, lived experiences and knowledge to be central to climate decision-making. The framework offers pathways for more equitable, inclusive and locally relevant approaches to mitigation, adaptation and resilience, particularly across the Global South.

Recognising care-centered economies for a just transition: Perspectives from the Global Majority (Part I)

“We are heirs of that moment in the history of modernity, where paid employment was crystallized as the “real work”. Other kinds of work, like care work, became invisibilized, and if paid, poorly paid. Work directly centered on the production for the well-being of the family and community (constituting “subsistence economies“) was devalued. Feminist scholars like S. Federici, have made a superb account of this process in our modern/colonial history, which in the long run made us lose sight that these types of devalued work constitute the bedrock of our economies.“

(published in The Sufficiency and Wellbeing Magazine)

Recognising care-centered economies for a just transition: Perspectives from the Global Majority (Part II)

“In the specific context of Eastern India, where I have been engaging with women on the cusp of this transition, one of the most generative things one can do is to create the conditions for their imagination of work to be heard not as a courtesy, but as an epistemic resource.“

(published in The Sufficiency and Wellbeing Magazine)