Mar 08 2010

Unleashing the Energy of Women

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

If my math is correct, today marks the 100th celebration of International Women’s Day, a tradition first proposed by Clara Zetkin, leader of the “women’s office” in the German Social Democrat Party.

The theme this year is “equal rights, equal opportunities: progress for all.”   While that’s entirely worthy, the United Nations, which began officially recognizing the day in 1975, ought to consider putting the focus on “women and energy” sometime before the next 100 years are up.

The United Nations Development Programme notes that two billion people around the world still live “off the grid,” depending on fuels such as wood and dung for heating, cooking and other basic household needs. In most societies, it falls mainly to women to collect and then use these fuels—dangerous, unhealthy and time-consuming activities that sap the ability of women to improve their education or earn a living. Providing new energy resources is thus a precondition to upgrading their economic and social condition:

Access to more efficient, cleaner, environmentally sustainable and reliable energy services is mandatory and needs to be addressed as part of the energy sector development plans in order to improve women’s status, provide them with more opportunities for income-generating work, and also improve their general health and living conditions as more effective members of their communities.

Energy, therefore, can be a key input and entry point toward achieving the third Millennium Development Goal: promote gender equality and empower women.

As previously discussed in NEXT100, a project in West Africa to introduce solar-powered irrigation allowed households to dramatically increase food yields, improving diets and netting $7 to $8 from surplus crop sales each week. The investment was a huge boon to women, who traditionally tend the gardens, by cutting the time they spend watering by 50 percent and freeing them up to earn additional money.

But just as clean energy can open doors for women, so women are essential to opening doors for new energy technology in many societies, noted Elizabeth Cecelski in a key report for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2000.  If women’s needs are ignored or misunderstood, they may resist new technology that reduces drudgery in one target sector only to increase their required labor in another. As Cecelski noted,

women are not a special interest group in renewable energy, they are the mainstream users and often producers of energy. Without their involvement, renewable energy projects risk being inappropriate, and failing. Women are the main users of household energy in developing and industrial countries; they influence or make many family purchases related to energy; they are experienced entrepreneurs in energy-related enterprises; and women's organizations are effective promoters of new technologies and active lobbyists for environmentally benign energy sources.

Renewable energy manufacturers that do not pay attention to women's needs will be missing a huge potential market. Energy policymakers who ignore women’s needs will be failing to make use of a powerful force for renewable energy development. Energy researchers who leave women out of energy research and analysis will be failing to understand a large part of energy consumption and production.

And let's not forget the role of women in developed societies, where the problem isn't so often access to energy as using too much of it. A national survey of women and energy last year, commissioned by Women Impacting Public Policy and the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment found that 77 percent of women say they have equal or primary responsibility for paying electricity bills, and 91 percent say they have equal or primary responsibility for using less electricity at home. By a two-to-one margin, the women surveyed cited moving toward cleaner energy sources as a more important energy goal than reliability or keeping costs low.

Sounds to me like women could become a key force in helping our own country transition to a clean energy future. That would be something to celebrate soon on International Women's Day.

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