Who speaks for sustainability transformation: Gendered visibility at Taiwan’s sustainability forums

Abstract

Gender scholarship has shown that climate governance is deeply shaped by social inequalities in voice, authority, and participation. Building on this insight, we examine sustainability conferences as key arenas where climate expertise is publicly staged and legitimised. We treat speaker composition at sustainability forums as a diagnostic indicator of how climate governance allocates visibility and authority. Using an original dataset of 976 speaker appearances across 61 conferences held in Taiwan between July and December 2024, we examine gender representation by speaking role, organiser type, and thematic focus. Women accounted for only 25.9% of speakers overall, with particularly low representation in climate and energy transition sessions (15.9%). Female visibility was higher in government-organised events and equity-focused sessions but remained limited across all categories. These findings reveal a persistent gendered division of expertise within Taiwan’s climate governance landscape. We argue that speaker composition offers a useful diagnostic indicator of how visibility and public recognition are distributed in sustainability governance arenas. The analysis illustrates how gender-composition mapping can be used to assess inclusivity in hybrid governance arenas beyond formal institutions.