Dynamic interactions between gender inequality ICT development and renewable energy

Abstract The Sustainable Development Goals form an interconnected system. This study examines the dynamic relationship between socio-economic factors and renewable energy consumption, used as a proxy for one dimension of climate change mitigation. The analysis focuses on gender inequality in education and digital access, captured through a composite Information and Communication Technology indicator. The gender gap is measured using educational attainment. The ICT indicator combines internet usage, mobile phone ownership, and fixed telephone subscriptions per 100 people. Using a PVAR covering 128 countries from 2006 to 2021, the study finds a statistically significant bidirectional relationship between gender inequality in education and population growth. Population growth further emerges as the only variable with a significant joint effect on the system's dynamics, while its pairwise associations with renewable energy consumption and the ICT composite indicator are not significant at conventional thresholds. Educational attainment and the ICT indicator show no significant direct causal effect on renewable energy consumption, suggesting that any influence of gender equality in education on the renewable energy transition, if present, is not detected as a direct pathway in this framework. Urbanization behaves as weakly exogenous, showing no significant causal links to the other variables. These findings suggest that gender-equitable education and demographic policy should be treated as a primary lever for climate-related outcomes, with digitalization and renewable energy investment serving as complementary, indirectly reinforcing instruments rather than independent drivers of change.