Women more likely to fall into energy poverty, EU Parliament warns

(EurActiv, 8 Mar 2023) Women have always been among those most affected by energy poverty, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis have exacerbated inequalities and widened the gender divide, according to the European Parliament’s committee on women’s rights.

Already in 2021, well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused energy prices to soar, experts had warned that women were more likely to fall into energy poverty than men.

“Poverty has a female face,” wrote Michaela Kauer, the director of the Brussels office of the City of Vienna, in an opinion piece published on EURACTIV.

This doesn’t happen by accident. The gender pay gap in the EU in 2020 was 13% and has only changed minimally over the previous decade. This means that women earn on average 13% less per hour than men. In 2019, the gender pension gap of EU citizens aged over 65 was close to 30%.

“Many women have lower average incomes, they work part-time, they also work in low-paid or precarious forms of employment. Many women work without pay, for example, in the household,” explained Robert Biedroń, a Polish socialist MEP who chairs the European Parliament’s committee on women’s rights and gender equality.

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EurActiv, 8 Mar 2023: Women more likely to fall into energy poverty, EU Parliament warns