India stands at a historic threshold. With a commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2070 and a target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030, the country is reshaping its energy future at extraordinary speed. Having achieved 50 percent of its installed electricity capacity from non-fossil sources in July 2025, the energy transition is unfolding here and now!
Alongside these advancements, conversations on a “just transition” are emerging in policy rooms and public discourse. How do we move away from fossil fuels without leaving workers and communities behind? How do we ensure that new green economies are built in ways that do not reproduce existing inequalities? Yet within these conversations, gender too often continues to be a blind spot.
This publication begins with a simple but urgent proposition: there can be no just transition without a gender lens. And gender-just transition cannot be reduced to token inclusion; it must be embedded in the design, imagination, and governance of our energy futures.
At a moment when India’s energy transition is accelerating, this publication seeks to foreground gender within ongoing debates - not as an add-on, but as a structural lens through which policy, finance, and governance must be reimagined. Women are not peripheral to energy systems. They are central to them. Women consume energy in homes and enterprises; they manage household resources; they power informal economies; they anchor agricultural and micro-enterprise livelihoods that are deeply vulnerable to climate change and energy disruption. And yet, their labour is undervalued, their expertise overlooked, their leadership under-recognised. Women remain underrepresented - and often absent - in planning and decision-making processes within the energy sector.
Yet across India, women are not waiting to be invited into the transition. They are already shaping it.
Travelling across geographies and social locations, this publication tells some of their stories. In doing so, it brings us into conversations with women farmers, community organizers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and the private sector. They show us that a just transition is not singular. It does not look the same in a tribal village, a mining belt, a polluted city, or a coastal metropolis. Instead, it takes shape in diverse ways: through decentralised renewable energy, alternative livelihoods, clean mobility, and institutional reform.
These pathways come to life in places as varied as Koraput (Odisha), Dhanbad (Jharkhand), Amritsar (Punjab), Pune (Maharashtra), and Rajapalayam (Tamil Nadu).
In the green, hilly landscapes of Koraput, solar energy is more than a technology; it is an enabler of dignity. Here, women-led poultry farming initiatives are powered by decentralized solar systems that strengthen women socially and economically.
Travel east to the coal-scarred terrains of Dhanbad, where the shadows of mining define both landscape and life. As the future of coal grows more uncertain, women in mining-affected communities confront a pressing question: what comes next?
In the holy city of Amritsar, where worsening air quality has become impossible to ignore, women leaders are at the forefront of shaping a gender-responsive electric mobility transition. In Pune, science and innovation intersect with women’s leadership to build sustainable energy futures. And further south, in Rajapalayam women in decision-making roles demonstrate why representation at the highest levels matters.
What binds these diverse stories is not geography, sector, or scale, but a shared commitment to equity - and to women’s meaningful participation in shaping change.
This publication bears witness to women who are already building the foundations of a just transition, often beyond the spotlight of policy and public discourse. These five stories are not exceptions; they offer glimpses into transformations unfolding across the country.
It is intended for policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and civil society actors committed to ensuring that India’s energy transition is both rapid and living up to its full potential.
The invitation is simple but urgent: to reimagine energy transitions in ways that centre lived realities, redistribute power, and recognise women not just as beneficiaries, but as architects of the future.