This year’s herCAREER took place on 17 and 18 October in Munich, Germany. Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF) e.V. had its own stand.
The objective of WECF was to create a space where gender, feminism, and underrepresentation of WLINTA* in the energy sector are discussed in the midst of the fair. Over the two days, the WECF team engaged in an intensive exchange with around 250 WLINTA* individuals, 20 energy companies, and other political, academic, and journalistic organisations.
Photo 1: WECF stand at herCAREER 2024
herCAREER is Germany’s largest career fair, mainly for women: With over 300 exhibitors, presentations and networking opportunities, it helps to strengthen and inspire WLINTA* on the labour market. The fair is primarily aimed at students, people starting their careers or those who want to change jobs.
Why were we at the career fair as an ecofeminist NGO?
Against the climate crisis, numerous transformations are being implemented in our political and economic system. Many companies and organisations at the career fair also emphasised their transformative actions for a sustainable future. However, WLINTA* are severely underrepresented in the process and implementation of the concrete design of these actions. Particularly, during the EUWES project, our analyses identified the challenges in the STEM academia, private companies, and the political sphere. This phenomenon favours structural inequalities, manifesting itself, for example, in gendered energy poverty or androcentric technology design. The WECF wanted to deconstruct the phenomenon for each theme where WLINTA* faces inequalities, and alert other participants to its severity.
Photo 2: A laundry line for information dissemination and a display table with EUWES materials
How did we engage with diverse people and entities?
WECF took a strategic approach by splitting the teams into two groups: Showcasing Team and Engagement Team. This approach enabled them to interact with as many and diverse people as possible.
The Showcasing Team presented five themes as following: energy poverty, gender equality in the energy sector, androcentrism (male-gaze) in technologies, greenwashing and pinkwashing, and gender-equal participation in energy cooperatives. Around 250 people approached to our stand and to the team and started to engage with one of the topics by taking part in the polls.
Photo 3: Poll questions with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ balls
This interactive approach provoked their interest, which led to further conversation on the issues, what they do, what the issues are, what WECF does for the issues. Especially, for EUWES, some WLINTA* working in the energy sector showed their interest and subsequently subscribed to the stakeholders’ e-mail group for further contact with the EUWES team.
The Engagement Team visited other stands of energy companies, government agencies, research institutes, and other organisations with WECF brochures and materials. Many of them were interested in our themes, but our team was keen enhance their actions for the gender equal future. Thereby, they invited other exhibitors to our stand and shared contacts with each other for further follow-up.
Are you based in Germany and working in the energy sector but missed to meet us at herCAREER? Don’t worry and please get informed by joining our e-mail list.
