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In response to Radha and Karen.
My comment is on Radha's contribution but also in response to the entire question.
For sure, women can and do contribute to energy production as the emerging examples in the clean cooking sector shows. The electricity sector is generally more technically complex and has not yet made strides to include women (but also local men other than state utility) in energy production and distribution. There is need for changing attitudes about women roles and the work place environment, building capacity and making financing available to enable the inclusion of women (and men) in electricity production especially beyond selling ready-made solar lanterns or micro-scale solar PV and micro-grids (even though this is also a good achievement). This will take time but the investments need to me made now.
Utilities and micro-utilities need to understand that including women is not about being charitable to women. Research in US and other OECD countries has shown that gender as well as ethnic diversity results in positive outcomes for companies. Return on investments and many other financial performance indicators are better for companies with more gender diversity in management and on boards than those that are less diverse.
For those of us that are researchers, we also need to be careful on how we define results and when we measure results. Understanding when to expect what results (of women's inclusion) is important in the policy advice we provide. We need strong research methods to convince policy makers rather than make up results that favour women but are easily pulled apart (i.e. in a strict analysis the results don't hold if the design of the research is not robust) and therefore not taken seriously.
Agencies that can afford to "experiment" with women-inclusive models from which lessons can be learnt need to step up and "bet" on women. The fear of failure when "betting on women" results in failure to learn lessons and move forward so things are done the way they have always been done - in a way that excludes women.
The AfDB can play an important role here. They have the capacity to support women's inclusion in production and capacity in a way that very few agencies can. They also have a wide range of investments they have made over the last 50 years and need to start supporting research of the impacts of these investments from a gender perspective.
In response to Radha and
Submitted by Margaret Matinga on Tue, 08/11/2016 - 15:57 Permalink
In response to Radha and Karen.
My comment is on Radha's contribution but also in response to the entire question.
For sure, women can and do contribute to energy production as the emerging examples in the clean cooking sector shows. The electricity sector is generally more technically complex and has not yet made strides to include women (but also local men other than state utility) in energy production and distribution. There is need for changing attitudes about women roles and the work place environment, building capacity and making financing available to enable the inclusion of women (and men) in electricity production especially beyond selling ready-made solar lanterns or micro-scale solar PV and micro-grids (even though this is also a good achievement). This will take time but the investments need to me made now.
Utilities and micro-utilities need to understand that including women is not about being charitable to women. Research in US and other OECD countries has shown that gender as well as ethnic diversity results in positive outcomes for companies. Return on investments and many other financial performance indicators are better for companies with more gender diversity in management and on boards than those that are less diverse.
For those of us that are researchers, we also need to be careful on how we define results and when we measure results. Understanding when to expect what results (of women's inclusion) is important in the policy advice we provide. We need strong research methods to convince policy makers rather than make up results that favour women but are easily pulled apart (i.e. in a strict analysis the results don't hold if the design of the research is not robust) and therefore not taken seriously.
Agencies that can afford to "experiment" with women-inclusive models from which lessons can be learnt need to step up and "bet" on women. The fear of failure when "betting on women" results in failure to learn lessons and move forward so things are done the way they have always been done - in a way that excludes women.
The AfDB can play an important role here. They have the capacity to support women's inclusion in production and capacity in a way that very few agencies can. They also have a wide range of investments they have made over the last 50 years and need to start supporting research of the impacts of these investments from a gender perspective.