Introduction. A just energy transition is a global imperative, anchored in the Paris Agreement and central to the Sustainable Development Goals. Beyond technical transformation, it requires fundamental shifts in social relations and power structures that govern energy systems. Without justice, transitions risk exacerbating inequalities, excluding vulnerable groups, and undermining legitimacy. Existing frameworks focus on structural and institutional barriers but insufficiently address how gender norms—particularly toxic masculinity—operate at micro-levels, systematically constraining opportunities, motivations, and capabilities of individuals, and thereby reinforcing inequities. This oversight is critical given growing evidence that hegemonic masculine ideologies correlate with resistance to climate action.
Purpose. This research introduces the Gendered Energy Justice Barriers Framework, a behavioral model for understanding how toxic masculinity creates and reinforces gender-based barriers across distributive, procedural, and recognition justice. Building on the COM-B modell (Michie et al., 2011) our framework systematically identifies opportunities, motivations, and capabilities that are constrained by toxic masculinity, thereby creating barriers to just energy transitions.
Method. The framework is developed in a dual approach: (1) deductively integrating hegemonic masculinity theory (Connell, 2002, 2005) with energy justice scholarship to identify how masculine norms undermine a just energy transition, and (2) inductively analyzing the gEneSys Citizen Survey dataset (N = 30,000) from European and Sub-Saharan African countries using multilevel structural equation modeling.
Results and Conclusion. We report which opportunities (e.g., exclusion from energy access), motivations (e.g., resistance to collective solutions), and capabilities (e.g., energy literacy, care responsibilities) are most constrained by toxic masculinity. We explore country-level differences, comparing differences in key conditions such as gender politics or fossil reliance, to see if barrier patterns differ. Our results contribute to applied psychology by clarifying when and where gender norms impede just energy participation, informing scalable, context-aware behavioral and structural solutions fostering just energy systems.