When college graduate Mona Kumari came across a pamphlet circulating in her neighbourhood about a government-sponsored solar training course, she quickly signed up, hopeful of finding work easily at the many solar parks dotting her home state of Rajasthan in northwestern India.

“I had heard about the solar boom, that solar was this big industry and that there would be many opportunities. I joined the course for that reason. I wanted to financially support my family,” the 23-year-old said ahead of the COP29 UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

She lived her dream during the three-month course, which is being offered across more than 500 centres in the South Asian nation to feed an ever-growing demand for green skills.

“I loved the training. I learned how to install solar panels, where to place them – not in the shade but where the sun’s rays fall on them – how to connect the wires. I was even taken to a project site for installations during the training,” said Kumari, whose father works as a labourer in the local market and is the only earning member in her family of seven. “I was looking forward to starting work.”

But her parents did not allow her to take up work in the distant, remote places where solar projects are located without transport and washrooms. This constitutes a societal roadblock women face in joining India’s green energy workforce, according to officials overseeing India’s skilling programmes.

About 2,700 km away in Baku, Azerbaijan, which is hosting COP29, campaigners this week expressed despair over gender getting overlooked at the summit.

Negotiators have struggled to get agreement on renewing a programme to advance gender-responsive climate policies, as socially conservative countries stood in the way. Activists feared this would derail action to plug gender gaps like those already emerging in the green workforce as countries like India build their clean energy capacity.

Green job roles not yet gendered

India is aiming for net-zero emissions by 2070 and a total shift to clean energy by 2050 – and has the potential to create 35 million green jobs by 2047, according to a government report on India’s green skills landscape.

But men make up 85% of all candidates who have undergone green skills training, data from the Skill Council for Green Jobs shows. Globally, women make up 32% of the clean energy workforce, according to a 2019 gender report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). In India, this figure stands at just 11%.

“In this green transition, job roles are not (yet) culturally determined as feminine or masculine and it is a great opportunity to bring both men and women at the same level,” said Lorena Aguilar, a gender expert who leads the Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls and has developed strategies and action plans to mainstream gender in U.N. initiatives.

About two-thirds of the nearly 14 million jobs globally in the renewable energy sector are in Asia, according to an International Renewable Agency annual review last year, with solar the fastest-growing sector.

COP29 Bulletin Day 10: Battle over gender language leaves a bitter taste

While solar has thrown up jobs for technicians and helpers post-installation, these roles require schooling up to twelfth and ninth grade respectively, which many girls don’t have in rural India.

“Many of them drop out of school to help in agriculture,” said Arpit Sharma, who heads India’s Skill Council for Green Jobs, which was launched by the Indian government less than a decade ago and acts as the interface between industry and candidates it trains for the green sector.

Sharma said reluctance among families to send their daughters to a “male-dominated site” and not having toilets at projects were key reasons for low numbers of women.

“Women are able to do this work, but the conditions are not conducive. We are speaking to industry about creating at least washrooms on site, and training centres to induct more women,” said Sharma, adding that his expectation from COP29 was for the industry to come forward with finance for green skills training.

Greater focus on and funding of green skills will need to be accompanied with more dialogue on women’s participation at this global climate summit to help overcome mindset barriers, analysts said.

More women at top level, fewer on the ground

In India, coordinators at centres offering green skills training said they tell women applicants that these jobs are in remote locations and may not be ideal for them, which has led to very few signing up for the programmes.

This despite initiatives that have garnered global attention over the years. At COP29, speakers have cited the barefoot engineers case study of women spearheading solar panel installations and maintenance in a Rajasthan village for years and training other women to do so. And in India’s electric vehicle sector, women dominate shop-floors.

“More women are taking u