The economics department of the IMF has co me out with another intriguing piece of research which, unfortunately, also seems rather pointless: women stand to lose as the world turns increasingly green because not enough of them have what it takes to get a green job, namely, education in science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM).

This is what the IMF economists say: “Men hold about 70 per cent of the world’s polluting jobs, so one might think that they have most to lose from the transition to cleaner energy…Yet, women are also at risk of losing out… because too few women study the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects that are vital to the green jobs of the future.”

What both the IMF and the World Bank appear to be concerned about is underrepresentation of women in the upcoming less polluting industries. The salaries and wages in these industries, they say, are higher and women will miss out because they don’t have STEM education. Where does India stand in the female STEM ranking? We beat even the developed countries. Our women are safer than elsewhere, at least in this regard.

India ahead

Thus according to the World Bank “India’s share of female graduates in STEM at 42.7 per cent in 2018, was higher than comparable data available for the US at 34 per cent in 2016, Australia at 32.1 per cent in 2017, and Germany at 27.6 per cent in 2017.”

It’s interesting that both the IMF and the World Bank are saying the same thing. This doesn’t happen very often. Both are saying that countries where women lag behind in STEM education should make efforts to catch up.

The IMF economists say “This (topic) is significant because green jobs command a substantial wage premium over other jobs in the economy, even after accounting for workers’ education and experience, as our calculations based on several representative countries show.”

It’s hard to understand, however, why gender should matter in an economic sense. Politically and socially it does if the objective is to level the playing field between men and women.

But it really ought not to make any difference in the labour market. As long as there are enough hands to combine with capital to produce something, how does it matter whether it’s a male or a female hand?

After all, to take but one example, 15 per cent of pilots in India are women, three times the global average. Indeed, IndiGo alone has around 800 of them. The planes don’t care.

Actually, sociological issues are also unclear. How does it matter if fewer women work in certain industries? As long as they get paid as much as men, it should make no difference even sociologically.

The paper makes a huge leap in logic when it says that “Countries with a bigger share of STEM-educated workers and stronger gender equality policies tend to have steeper reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in response to climate policies. Emissions intensity in these countries is 2 to 4 percentage points lower.”

This isn’t obvious even intuitively let alone logically. Gender should make absolutely no difference either to the adoption of climate friendly technologies or to policies.

To see why, look at China. It has a low STEM ranking for women but is doing very well in climate friendly policies and technologies.

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