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Paper short abstract

The European Union is facilitating energy transitions in Europe and South Africa. In Estonian the EU (covertly) valorises carbon masculinities and in South Africa it (overtly) challenges them. This paper will explore how actors engage with Just Transition frameworks to negotiate gendered and justice

Paper long abstract

The European Union is funding and facilitating two energy transitions. In Europe, through the European Green Deal, it attempts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, while ensuring a modern, resource-efficient, competitive (capitalist) economy. In South Africa, the European Union is the primary funder of the international Just Energy Transition Partnership, an 8.5-billion-dollar program to decarbonise the South African economy while creating jobs and industries and while ensuring a ‘fair transition’ for affected communities.

The predominance of men in carbon extractive industries worldwide ensures that masculinities are central to both these transitions, yet they are treated in near inverse manners. In transitioning Estonian oil shale workers, the European Union’s (unstated) concern is ensuring a viable masculinity, a ‘just transition’ from their petro-masculinity to an equally meaningful subjectivity. While policy documents mention opportunities for women, public discourse mostly focuses on retraining and employing men. In contrast, in directing South Africa’s energy transition, the European Union demands that gender equity takes centre stage, directing significant economic and political capital at reshaping South Africa’s gender norms within this transition. Yet South Africa’s coal miners, as much as Estonian oil shale workers, are experiencing the loss of a privileged carbon-masculinity.

This paper explores how South African and Estonian actors engage with and subvert Just Transition frameworks and funding mechanisms as they negotiate and re-create their gendered subjectivities, as well as how they articulate narratives of ‘green’ and ‘justice’ that reflect (and subvert) heteronormative masculinity.