ENERGY WEEK 2006

Gender & Energy Session:

Does Gender Matter in the Delivery of Energy Services?

Tuesday March 7, 2006

Honorable Ministers, Dear Participants:

It is my pleasure to welcome you to this evening session. You have had two long days of discussion at Energy Week, and yet you’re here tonight! Your presence is a clear indication of your commitment to explore even further the question of gender in our energy practice. The session in the afternoon was focused on learning from experience. Tonight, we want to broaden the debate and question ourselves very openly: Does Gender Matter in the Delivery of Energy Services. But before I ask Dr. Govind Kelkar to make her presentation on the outcomes of the afternoon discussions, I would like to present the gender issue in the context of the Bank’s energy strategy.

First, I want to reiterate the Bank’s commitment to address gender equality and empowering women as a matter of development effectiveness. This is the foundation for our work on gender in energy. Meeting the needs of the energy poor is at the core of our energy strategy, and, as we know, 70% of the poor are women. In my view, it is not enough to recognize that the availability of clean and affordable energy services is a critical input to economic growth and social development. We must understand the detailed impact and linkages of energy services and gender equity and empowerment. For example:

  • The health, education, and productive activities of women and children are particularly sensitive to the availability of modern energy services.
  • Modern cooking duels free women and children from the burden of collecting and carrying large loads of fuel-wood and from exposure to debilitating fumes from traditional cooking stoves.
  • Improved lighting enables adults and children of both sexes to study after their daytime activities end. And,
  • Electricity enables both women and men in poor households to engage in activites that generate income – by providing lighting that extends the workday and powering machines that increase output.

Integrating gender in policy making is indispensable, even though it may be complex. For example, in many developing countries women have no land tenure rights. While they are the main suppliers of wood energy, they have, as a result, little or not opportunities to develop sustainable fuel-wood plantations. Another example is in poor urban areas, women-headed households which are often more numerous, are unable to access water or electricity services. One of the key reason is that Utilities require formal employment references or a billing address, and women tend to be more active in the informal sector and often cannot register their house in their name – because housing registration is denied to women. Should we not also recognize that rural energy programs have been biased towards electrification, and relatively little has been done to address the issue of cooking fuels – too often seen as a ‘women issue’?

In order to design successful energy policies that address equitably the needs of both men and women, more women are needed among law makers and policy makers, and among qualified technicians, engineers, and enterprise managers. Women need to be heard when we design energy programs and projects, and we must encourage gender specialists to participate in the energy work.

In the Bank, we have made some progress in this area, possibly more on the analytical work than in the policy and project work, but we have established the foundations to move forward. This is not enough. As we continue to scale up our energy program,

  • we are giving more emphasis on addressing the full range of energy needs, from cooking fuels to power to transportation fuels.
  • we are expanding the range of technical options, in particular off-grid solutions, community-based solutions, lower cost technologies, which should enable us to tailor responses to the broader needs of women and men.
  • we are also expanding the range of financing mechanisms, in particular the targeting of subsidies to the lowest income groups, with the intent to give more opportunities to also meet women’s needs.
  • We are exploring new opportunities to stimulate the development of energy SMEs where we know women can be actively engaged. In this respect, we are increasingly learning from the water sector which in this respect is more advanced than the energy sector.

With these brief remarks, let me now introduce our speaker Dr. Govind Kelkar, and the panelist. Dr Govind Kelkar is Coordinator of IFAD-UNIFEM Gender Mainstreaming Programme in Asia, New Delhi, and the founding Editor of the journal Gender, Technology and Development. She has also had a prestigious academic career with Delhi University, the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) where she also founded the graduate program in Gender Development Studies, and has published extensively on Gender in Development issues.

H. E. Syda Bbumba has been Minister of Energy of Uganda since XXX, and was previously a member of Parliament. She was one of the first women energy minister in Africa and spear-headed new thinking and initiatives on how to provide energy services for the poor. She has been a relentless advocate of meeting women’s needs. Minister Bbumba has been an energy leader for Africa. It was on her initiative that the Forum of Africa Energy Ministers was launched in the summer of 2005, which gave the Africa Energy Ministers a special voice at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development last September.

Mrs Harriette Amissah-Arthur is the director of the The Kumasi Institute of Technology and Environment (KITE) is a non-governmental organisation based in Ghana. Ms Amissah-Arthur has over 20 years experience in the energy sector, especially in power system planning and operations as an Electrical Engineer who obtained a BSc. Degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Kumasi, Ghana in 1982. She holds a Masters in Business Administration, MBA (Finance Option) from the University of Ghana, Legon. Prior to taking her appointment in KITE, she served the Volta River Authority, She leads a Women in Engineering group to promote female engineers in Ghana.

Ahmed OUNALLI has more than 30 years experience as Energy Economist. At present he is Director, Strategic Studies Group of the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Utility (STEG), where he started his career in 1974. Mr OUNALLI worked also with the Ministry of Energy and with the Tunisian Energy Management Agency. At the international level, Mr OUNALLI worked as Regional Advisor on Energy with UNDP/ESCAP (Bangkok). He is also Energy Consultant mainly to the African Development Bank and to the European Economic Commission.

The panel will be moderated by my colleague, Dominique Lallement, Energy Adviser with ESMAP, where as manager for 7 years she spear-headed the work on gender in energy.

Thank you.