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Portrait de Elizabeth Cecelski
Elizabeth
Cecelski

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So glad to see this forum and opportunity to learn about ADB gender and energy experiences! ENERGIA is always trying to gather more relevant experiences to share in international, regional and national fora and practical operations that we participate in.

Some examples that ENERGIA has collected and often supported, of gender challenges in energy access that electricity utilities have sought to address, include:

- the Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) found out from a Department of Energy study that female-headed households were connecting to the grid at half the rate of male-headed households, in spite of the Draft National Energy Policy calling for inclusion of gender differences in energy planning. So BPC started tracking connection applications by sex of household head, and sought to develop marketing strategies and products to target female-headed households to use electricity in income-generation activities that would make electricity connections more affordable.

- Electricidad de Mozambique (EdM) wanted to increase connections and consumption of electricity from the national grid by rural households for domestic and productive uses, and found that rural Mozambican women did not understand the benefits. EdM carried out a demonstration project using women community workers with knowledge of local languages to create electricity demand through mobilizing women, to provide a model for community outreach. Various energy equipment, gadgets and household appliances were demonstrated to women to show their time and labour-saving benefits. Community Energy Centres were set up to assist rural women to earn an income by using locally available agricultural products and energy efficient technologies.

- an equal opportunity policy developed with the Kenya Power and Light Company (KPLC) found top management support and affirmative action in recruitment, but that women were poorly represented in policy decisions and advancement. The new policy dedicated resources for gender mainstreaming and gender disaggregated data, and set incentives and targets for improving KPLC’s staffing profile.

- ECOWAS has carried out a situation analysis of gender and energy issues in Member States, and found gender imbalances that inhibit representative decision making, and lack of the policy, regulatory and institutional framework around gender mainstreaming in the energy sector. In response, a Regional Policy for Gender Mainstreaming in Energy Access has been validated with energy ministries in all 15 Member States, which sets five strategic objectives and targets for gender-responsive large energy infrastructres and investments as well as for women’s participation in both public and private energy sector.

-in Tanzania, an assessment with the Rural Energy Agency found that while positive employment and income generating opportunities for both women and men followed electrification and REA’s promotion of productive uses of energy, women’s businesses faced specific constraints, and tended to be smaller both in number and value than men-owned businesses. Strengthening partnerships of REA and developers with national and local government, NGOs/CBOs and microfinance institutions that work with women’s businesses were recommended to be strengthened to target specific promotional and credit measures and business skills to women’s as well as men’s businesses, to bridge the gap.

- the Rural Electrification Agency in Uganda hosted a workshop with private contractors, to ensure that any gender actions proposed would be feasible for them. The contractors came up with ideas for effective actions such as task analysis to identify opportunities to employ women, and allocating points in bidding for contracts to firms that employed women or had gone through gender training.

I am wondering whether ADB staff can share examples of ADB energy access projects that have gender-responsive elements? For example, gender assessment at planning stage that identifies some of the energy access gender challenges that Sheila refers to in her opening? Or gender activities included in the energy project to address these? Or sex-disaggregated data collection in the M&E framework to monitor progress towards gender equality in energy access?