Phase 2 - Online Discussion: Gender Inequality in the Production and Distribution of Energy

Quels rôles pourraient jouer les femmes dans la production et la distribution de l’énergie en Afrique ?

L'autonomisation de la femme peut passer par le commerce et distribution des produits énergétiques renouvelables surtout que cela va dans leur avantage et à l'avantage de la planète.

· Quels sont les défis liés à l'engagement des femmes dans la production et la distribution de l’énergie?
Les défis majeurs sont leur formation en technologie et les risques, le leadership en marketing, la confiance en soi, le financement, la gestion dans la transparence, la maintenance, la réparation.

· Comment la Banque peut-elle relever ces défis, spécialement vis-à-vis de l'autonomisation des femmes entrepreneurs dans la production et la distribution de l’énergie ?
La banque ne peut passer que par les organisations de la société civile qui optent pour la distribution de l'énergie et qui sont plus proches des femmes en les subventionnant. L'autonomisation énergétique de la femme favorise la lutte contre la pauvreté féminine et la lutte contre les maladies cardio-vasulaire, des pneumonies.

· Comment les autres organisations, y compris les institutions financières de développement (IFD) ont-ils relevé ces défis ?
En accordant de prêts aux secteurs privé pour servir la population.

· Comment pouvons-nous accroître la base de données sur l'impact positif de l'engagement des femmes dans la production et la distribution de l’énergie ?
Pour relever ces défis les organisations et surtout les institutions financières de développement sont obligées de subventionner la production et la distribution des produits énergétiques comme "Power for All" et favoriser le transfert de la technologie vers les pays en penne-rie et la distribution, à un coût moins élevé, tout en impliquant les femmes et les filles dans tous les processus.

I share my responses to questions 1 and 2.

Question1. What roles could women play in the production and distribution of energy in Africa? Women can play any role in production and distribution of energy in Africa, the key is however to encourage more women to be interested in the sector, this could be achieved through sensitizing both men and women on the possibility of women doing jobs that are typically considered male jobs, target women for engineering (e.g. electrical) degrees and technical programs, for example, provide incentives for girls to enroll such as stipends. Furthermore, the current key actors within the sector should be trained on gender sensitive design approaches, for example, project design should always include community consultations where women's views are recorded & considered in project design. Unskilled women could also be trained in for example maintenance activities of renewable energy projects, small businesses could be developed such as solar panels, biofuels, etc.

Question 2. How can we increase the evidence base on the impact of women’s successful engagement in the production and distribution of energy? During the design it is important to undertake a baseline assessment, design appropriate monitoring indicators and expected targets, it is important to record the trail of consultations held with women and demonstrate the gender sensitive dimensions have been included in the design leading to the chosen indicators.

Response to question 1: What are the challenges to women’s engagement in the production and distribution of energy?

Although women are disproportionately impacted by inefficient cooking practices, they play a crucial role in the widespread adoption and use of clean cooking solutions. As consumers and users, women not only drive demand, they ultimately decide if products are fully adopted. As entrepreneurs and market actors, women can catalyze markets and scale adoption by generating demand, reaching new and different consumer segments, and scaling distribution. Increasing women’s participation in the cookstove value chain can lead to the creation of sustainable business models that leverage the capacity of local skills and knowledge.

In order to successfully engage women and address gender issues, several barriers must be addressed. The following constraints are specifically applicable to women entrepreneurs:

● Exclusion because of gender discrimination;
● Limited education and/or technical and business knowledge;
● Undervalued and undercompensated labor;
● Lack of control over assets and resources;
● Limited free time because of their triple role in society (reproductive, productive, and community responsibilities); and
● Low representation in policy and decision-making.

By conducting gender analysis, organizations can better understand the gender roles and dynamics in the communities they serve. This information will help enterprises understand the barriers that women entrepreneurs they are seeking to recruit and retain are facing, allowing them to develop targeted strategies to overcome them. The Alliance’s resource guide on Scaling Adoption of Clean Cooking Solutions through Women’s Empowerment further identifies the common constraints that women entrepreneurs face including lack of access to financing, education, training, and market data, as well as mobility restrictions and discriminatory cultural and gender norms.

In addition, fostering agency-based empowerment and leadership can be critical to more effectively engaging women as micro and small entrepreneurs. Despite their advantageous position to market clean cooking technologies, women entrepreneurs face specific challenges from both their extrinsic social and cultural environment, as well as intrinsic factors. While extrinsic factors directly influence an individual’s capacity to function in their environment, multiple intrinsic factors – such as self-efficacy, agency, motivation, and drive – contribute substantially to women’s competitiveness, growth, and capacity to succeed as entrepreneurs.

Results from a recent Johns Hopkins University study (funded by the Alliance) in Kenya demonstrated that the use of agency-based empowerment training significantly improved entrepreneurial capacity to sell cookstoves: women are nearly 3 times as likely to sell more products as compared with men, and those individuals who underwent the empowerment training were 2.7 times more likely to be top sellers compared to those who participated in a standard entrepreneurial training. Qualitative feedback reports indicated that entrepreneurs could benefit from additional training to build both business and intrinsic leadership skills. In response to this study, other studies examining agency-based empowerment trainings, and Alliance partner interest, the Alliance commissioned and released the Empowered Entrepreneur Training Handbook with training material on business, empowerment and leadership (specific to women entrepreneurs in the household energy sector).

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Response to Question 2: How can we increase the evidence base on the impact of women’s successful engagement in these sub-sectors?

While efforts have focused on developing measurement methodologies to capture the environmental and health impacts of clean and/or efficient cookstoves and fuels, less is known about the social impacts that result from the clean cooking sector - particularly related to women’s engagement in the clean cooking supply chain. Amid increasing public and private investment in the clean cooking sector, understanding the sector’s social impact has become more important than ever. Due to this gap and our interest in social impacts – particularly in how clean and/or efficient cookstoves and fuels contribute to the empowerment of women along the supply chain – the Alliance and ICRW have worked together to create a global social impact measurement system: “Measuring Social Impact in the Clean and Efficient Cooking Sector: A How-To Guide.”

The social impact measurement system was developed through an extensive process, including a review of existing women’s empowerment and social impact methodologies and frameworks (e.g., W+ Standard, Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), etc.); an expert Steering Committee convened to solicit insights; and field testing with partners in India, Kenya, and Uganda.

This systematic social impact measurement system can ensure that all actors are in alignment as to how to define and measure the social impacts associated with clean and/or efficient cookstoves and fuels. The measurement system will increase the capacity of diverse enterprises, implementers, NGOs, investors, donors, and other global stakeholders to understand, quantify, and assess the social and economic impacts of clean and/or efficient cookstoves and fuels. It will also allow global actors, such as the Alliance, to aggregate data in order to quantify the extent to which clean and/or efficient cookstoves and fuel initiatives generate social impacts across contexts and settings.

The social impact measurement system includes three surveys to measure social impacts:
1. The Organizational Social Impact Survey: this is conducted annually within organizations (which may include enterprises and other implementers) to provide insights into the social impacts that clean and/or efficient cookstove/fuel organizations can have through the types of opportunities they provide to their employees and the users of their products.
2. The Employee/Entrepreneur Social Impact Survey: this is conducted with the employees and/or entrepreneurs of clean and/or efficient cookstove/fuel organizations to capture changes that occur in the lives of employees/entrepreneurs as a result of their employment/affiliation with these organizations.
3. The User Social Impact Survey: this is conducted among clean and/or efficient cookstove and fuel end-users to measure changes at the individual and household levels as a result of using the cookstoves/fuels.

The surveys are accompanied with a Social Impact How-To document to guide organizations in implementing and using the surveys, as well as the results.

We urge organizations in the household energy sector to download and use the social impact measurement system in order to capture and share evidence.

Decentralized systems will play a significant role in providing access to electricity in Africa in the coming decades. This requires fascilitating and encouraging bottom up approaches to electrification. In several countries in Africa, there are women social associations and this associations could be the power providers for their communities. This requires research and capacity building to support the women in identifying the right technology and managing the system. Governments should provide collateral to fascilitate access to finance. The women have every potential to be the power producers, distributors and consumers of their communities.

How far are is energy technology that is being promoted taking into account women needs and aspirations? Are Renewable Energy tech. companies for example aware that manuals and user guides have to be sensitive to the needs of women?

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.

Question 3: Actions from DFIs and Examples
What have other organizations including Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) done to address these challenges?

Private sector has a role, but it is important not to constrain to it. Cooperatives are important arrangement institutions that can break the income-concentration, vertical-control, profit-led rationale of standard private companies. Cooperatives led by women "join their voices" and provides economic power in negotiations. A network of cooperatives can provide a room for sharing experiences, tools and solutions.

The community should decide their developmental needs and prioritize them. Organizations must learn to patiently HEAR the people and wear off preconceptions and pre-made responses to the needs of the community or families. There are many examples and lessons of it, like the Honey Bee Network in India: http://www.sristi.org/hbnew/

Example
"Rebecca [a rural farmer from Mpigi, Uganda] received a solar light and she wanted to put the light in the family’s chicken room, knowing from experience that chickens eat better when they can see, and by increasing the hours of light, the chickens eat more, get healthier, and lay more eggs. Rebecca’s husband wanted to put the light in the family room. After a family discussion, Rebecca stood her ground and the light was placed in the chicken room. Indeed the chickens laid more eggs, improving the economics of her farm and providing income that allowed her to buy seeds, and eventually a goat, pigs, and even a cow.

From the simple improvement of a single light, Rebecca built a farm and eventually a school where she teaches children to read, write, and do small plot farming."

This short story shows: the relevance of local knowledge [why in the chicken room?], the relevance of women participation in decision-making [the solution came from her and the following decisions of what to do with the extra earnings] and being courageous and stuborn (for some seemed crazy) [she stood up "against" the husband]. My question is: how many scholars or experts would "advice" to put the light in any place other than the chicken room?

We must HEAR and LEARN a lot with indigenous and local people! (by people I mean all, especially women because energy poverty, besides affecting all, is a serious gender issue)!

https://www.treedom.net/en/blog/post/solar-sister-a-passion-for-energy-a...

Question 3:
Les habitudes culinaires et alimentaires sont difficiles à changer. Cela dit, il faut trouver des mécanismes de subvention de la cuisine au gaz. Par exemple les petites cuisinières à gaz sont chères ; et les bouteilles de gaz contraignantes à porter.
Il faut donc encourager la construction artisanale des foyers simplifies à gaz ; développer des programmes de plantation de bois à charbon et impliquer les femmes. Il faut aussi encourager l’utilisation des cuisinières solaires ; et subventionner la fabrication de fours artisanaux pour faire la cuisine ainsi que fumer les poissons et viandes, comme vu au Benin)

We are handling an important and germaine topic that will move Africa forward., To start with, Light up and power Africa for women and men is an all inclusive project, Judging from the statistics that men and women use power, Men own the house and women operate the lights and house hold gadgets, including freezers and fridge, pressing irons, Microwave and room lights. Women business always require power example, Bakeries, frozen foods, Fashion designing and mini Agriculture processing in the house and in the Cooperative settings.
Women are always very dynamic, articulate and progressive and prudent in doing businesses. Women alway pay back loans when given. Women should be part of light up Africa Business and invest in power as an out sourced contractor or supplier in other to supply quality and durable goods and materials.

Women like men should be given an opportunity to own power distribution stations so that prudence will be part of the trade agreement for quality and timely supply and installation of cables.

Women also contribute to family expenditure and house keeping and so any profit made will be well utllized in supporting the upkeep of the family and in growing a more sustainable Economic growth for the families, Nations and Africa.

I agree with Rodolfo, the voices of local people and especially women who use energy both for household and their small-medium enterprises should be taken into consideration in decision-making concerning energy use and accessibility.The how? is through liaising with existing women cooperatives as rightly said. The role of women in economic development has a lot to do with their access to energy. In addition Banks providing energy support services should partner with private sector organisations actively involved in providing energy services including sources like solar, wind, etc. to effectively supply energy requirements. Relying on one energy source has been the problem of energy insufficiency in Africa, taking advantage of available alternative sources, together with efficient management will contribute reducing energy problems.

There is so much inequality and inequity already existing in the energy sector. There's inequality in the leadership, governance and economic systems in the energy sector. No wonder this has trickled down to production and distribution. Very few women make up the top of the ladder, even in companies where they are workers or staff. Because women do not have capital to start big businesses, or to scale up even when they start one, women have many challenges along the way. Women small scale farmers do not have capital or credit to produce, process and market their produce. They use inefficient energy resources that affect the quality of their produce and therefore marketing. Patriarchy, entrenched stereotyping and negative and harmful cultural practices that assume only men as having the knowledge and expertise and strong muscles, have contributed to inequality in women's access to resources that enable them to explore the potentials they have in contributing to the energy sector. To address these challenges, women will have to be intentionally supported to address their strategic needs of acquiring education, business skills, credit and capacity building to enable them produce, transport and market energy technologies and resources.

Active and effective participation of women and men in energy resilient systems ( especially sustainable alternative renewable sources) should be the call of the day. In rural areas as well as marginalized urban settlements, women bear the burden of searching for firewood and are unproductive, affecting their social-economic actives directly or indirectly in there environments.
However, this pivotal role has seldom been reflected in most institutional arrangements for the development and management of energy production and distribution services. I feel programs are required to improve of women’s participation by the following: (i) fair representation of women in donor funded programs( cook stoves, biogas, solar PV, etc) should be encouraged (ii) immediate alternative energy source programs should be based on what both men and women in communities on what they know, want, and are able to manage, maintain and pay for. (iii) raise awareness, train and empower women to actively participate at all levels in sustainable renewable energy programs, including decision making, planning, supervision and management.
Gender has to mainstreamed according to the energy policies in our various African countries responsible Ministries and Utilities, which requires equal male and female representation. For many electricity connection schemes there are more women entrepreneurs who are in need of this energy as production input and are taking care of families and children than men in the committees who often get the benefits due to corruption practices. Women should be elected as the chairpersons and nominated as treasurers to mention a few. However, it is also recognized that the power of the women on the committees varies very few women attend the meetings because they are uneducated and lack awareness and they do not see the value of attending the meetings if their voices will not be heard. Hence different strategies to get them on board should be enhanced, like giving them waivers and subsidize to meet the set objectives.

I find these discussions extremely interesting and want to expand on Maggie's comment.
On one hand, it is indeed necessary for energy companies -ESCO's or technology distributions co's- to understand that diversity in the work force has a positive financial dividend (Catalyst, 2011). Investing in women is the financially smart thing to do.

However, the questions posted here go beyond these actors. In fact, in order to address the role of DFI's and the support they can lend to women entrepreneurship in the energy sector it is necessary to also aknowledge a series of stereotypes that shape the financial world. For example, although there is empiric evidence (from micro-loans experiences) that women repay their loans at higher rates this knowledge does not automatically translate into increasing women's access to financial products.
As such, women have to face a series of limitations when asking for funding, including: (i) they may not have the necessary assets to their names to support heir request, (ii) they may be intimidated by the legal language and procedures of the banks -or traditioanlly may prefer deflecting to family loans-, (iii) they may be confronted with gender steretypes of bank clerks -through dismissive language as a response to a perception of "lack of technical knowledge" for conducting business with the bank.

DFI's can gain much from sensitizing their own staff and requesting the institutions they fund to do the same. For example, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) requests its implementing entities to have or work towards the development and implementation of a gender policy as one of the requisites for accessing the fund. In additon the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), in their second finance round have called for countries putting forward their investment plans to address gender considerations in their plans and facilitated connections with gender experts withing the regional development banks to support the process.

The AfDB could borrow from the abovementioned experiences and examine the extent to which agencies accessing its funding can be requested to invest in capacity building and development of financial products designed to specifically target women and men entrepreneurs in the energy sector.

As for the final question, I believe it is absolutely necessary to ensure strong research of existing experiences for involving women entrepreneurs in the energy sector. This research should focus both on success and not-so-successful experiences, to ensure lessons can be extracted from both types of experiences. This may be particularly important for demonstrating not only if or how women entrepreneurs can be successful, but also which are the institucional frameworks or enabling environments that allow DFI's to succesfully invest in women and men entrepreneurs in the energy sector.

L'égalité des sexes dans la production et la distribution de l'énergie doit passer par la politique de promotion de la femme, la défense des droits de la femme par les organisations de la société civile et l'Etat, l'équité genre, l'autonomisation de la femme. Leur encouragement.

Hello everyone.
I would like to respond to the first question posed.

Since 2014, ENERGIA has been implementing its Scaling up Energy Access through Women’s Economic Empowerment”(WE) programme. In Africa, the programme is active, through its partners in Kenya, Tanzania, NIgeria, Uganda and Senegal. The programme works with 2500 African women (and with 1000 in Asia) run small and micro enterprises selling energy services.
Agreeing with others who have highlighted a number of challenges, I would like to highlight two that are particularly pronounced for women, and elaborate on ENERGIA’s strategy to address them. The first relates to access to finance: for initial investment, as well as working capital. Commercial banks in developing countries do not know enough about the market opportunities at the last mile and perceive women’s businesses to be riskier, higher cost, and with lower returns. Microfinance, in most developing countries is too expensive (largely because if the high perceived risks and high transaction costs of operation). Further, the quantity of finance available from MFIs is mostly small, inadequate especially as the businesses grow and need medium sized investments. Some of the strategies we have worked with include equipment financing for entrepreneurs through loan guarantee funds and pay-as-you-go systems to offset the risks to suppliers and lenders, working with Village Savings and Loan Associations (VLSAs) that can provide loans to its members , and also aggregate financial resources to the purchase off-grid products in bulk and sell.
The other reality that we have to contend with is that most women tend to be more risk averse and vulnerable, and that their sense of agency and confidence needs to be built up, in order for them to be businesswomen. Laws including gender-biased inheritance and property and land tenure laws, assets and wealth (or lack thereof) influence women’s status and bargaining power in the household. Traditions and social norms often prevent women from gaining equitable access to and control of assets, and their positions in households and communities remains weak. Yet if they are to succeed in their businesses, they have to have the confidence to sell beyond their immediate neighbourhoods, extend their markets beyond their communities and deal with a variety of situations. ENERGIA has been working with Winrock, Global Alliance on Clean Cookstoves and John Hopkins University, to provide training that build women’s confidence and leadership in general, including building confidence and agency to travel further to find markets, negotiate with suppliers, approach local leaders and so on. At the same time, ENERGIA projects provide targeted, one to one ‘mentorship’ support to the women entrepreneurs that is sustained until the time that they are ready to work on their own. The women’s enterprise networks in each of the countries are also mobilized to provide ‘sisterhood support’ to each other.

I find phase II discussions very interesting and would like to share the following thoughts:

QN1. What roles could women play in the production and distribution of energy in Africa?
Women can do both the production and distribution of energy in Africa. Women in their different positions, capacities and location can perform different critical activities like:
• Those in position of policy making (parliamentarians, minsters etc.) can help to ensure national policies are conducive for women to take part in the energy sector.
• Those in ministries of education science and technology. They can ensure courses and curriculum for energy sector attract more women as it is now.
• Women in ministries of energy they can ensure energy programmes meets the needs of women in both rural and urban settings

QN2. What are the challenges to women’s engagement in the production and distribution of energy?
• Lack of capacity is the major constrain: This include both adequate knowledge and financial resources;
• There has been inadequate identification, analysis and advocacy relating to issues relevant to the participation of women in the oil and gas sector value chain;
• In general, the challenges facing women’s effective participation in energy sector are 1) external factors, related to negative stereotypes and discrimination and weak policies; 2) internal factors, related to limited education & skills, finances ; and (3) natural factors, related to the reproductive and child caregiving responsibilities. 4) Limited and or prohibiting policy environment that promote ownership and effective participation of Africa indigenous people in oil industries.

QN3. How can the Bank address such challenges, with specific reference to empowering women entrepreneurs in the production and distribution of energy?
• The bank can design specific programmes to address the challenges, such as:
o Capacity development short and long term programmes that address skills gaps
o Capacity development programs to improve access to financial resources to women entrepreneurs
o Knowledge management programmes that include studies to understand the oil, gas and energy value chains vis-à-vis the gender considerations along these chains.
o Programme that advocate for gender responsible energy programs as well as gender responsive energy policies design and implementation.
o Promotion and recognition programs for individual women doing well in the sector e.g. the Catherine Uju Ifejika the CEO of Brittania-U Limited in Nigeria or groups like those of Women in Oil and Energy South Africa (WOESA)in South Africa
QN4. What have other organizations including Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) done to address these challenges?
• In South Africa, there has been an establishment of a women’s group known as Women in Oil and Energy South Africa (WOESA),
• In Sierra Leon, the Government recent passage of a Finance Bill (Finance Act 2016) that provides for a tax cut of up to 6.5 percent for any company employing women in managerial positions. With the oil industry picking momentum in the country, the industry could take advantage of this incentive by employing women in top positions.

QN5. How can we increase the evidence base on the impact of women’s successful engagement in the production and distribution of energy?
• Develop a knowledge management program that will document, monitor publish and organise knowledge sharing events around the subject matter.

Best Regards

Aimtonga Makawia (Ms)

Knowledge and Learning Officer | KME

Joining the statements of Francisca, Faustina, Radha and other participants together with the voices of women practioners outside this forum, whatever their focus is (including energy), it is crystal clear the huge distance that separates the DFIs and the local population at the margin of, or even invisible to, the institutions (multilateral, national, local).

Banks and institutions are always pressing for scaling-up successful initiatives and forget to scale-down themselves. An individual successful initiative succeeds due to, among other reasons, the closer presence of institutions/donors/personnel involved in the individual project. So, scale up the individual project presuposes the use of this closer presence of the institutions/donors/personnel.

So, to let women (and all who need) climb the long ladder Faustina mentioned in, the DFIs must not be at the faraway top of the ladder waiting each woman, child and marginalized person climbs it. DFIs must go downstairs to listen to, and learn from, those local voices and knowledge and become more locally effective. Climbing the stairs together. Change the mindset! Scale down (pulverize) the institution without losing its global governance is perfectly possible. It depends much less on money or technical issues than POLITICAL WILL.

On the other hand, pratically speaking, the comfort zone of those who are are upsteirs is a huge barrier. And politically speaking, the biggest barrier is to reduce the DFI rate-of-return mindset when there are other more profitable and easier ways of investing the money. It is a cruel human(male)-made world. Let's change it.

Rodolfo.