How to energize women

Abstract

Lack of access to modern energy services represents a pressing problem in the developing world, not least for women. Many poor women spend much of their time on menial work that could be performed much more easily if energy were available, and safety concerns often prevent women from going out at night where there are no streetlights. Children suffer too—more than 50 percent of the developing world’s children attend primary schools that lack electricity, and this can lead to markedly worse educational outcomes. Access to modern energy services might be improved through, among other approaches, establishing small-scale hydroelectric projects, facilitating the use of home solar systems, or providing grid electricity (which itself might be produced either with conventional fuels or through renewable means). Three authors—Kalpana Sharma of India, Dipak Gyawali of Nepal (2014), and Corinne Hart of the United States (2014)—discuss which methods of expanding energy access show most promise for improving the lives of the developing world’s poor women and children.

On the road that leads to the controversial nuclear energy facility at Kudankulam in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, an unexpected sight greets the visitor—mile after mile of giant windmills spinning indolently. It seems incongruous for an energy source as environmentally benign as windmills to lie so close to something as hazardous as a nuclear power plant.

If you talk to the hundreds of women in the region who—even though their homes receive only a sporadic supply of electricity—have protested for years against construction of the Kudankulam facility, they tell you they would prefer further development of wind energy instead of nuclear. Why, they ask, is the government determined to pursue nuclear energy when less dangerous alternatives are available?

Chances are low in any event that these women will benefit from the power that the long-delayed nuclear plant will eventually generate. The electricity will be fed into the grid and used by people elsewhere. Millions of women and men living along India’s coasts and rivers, or in forests that might be submerged by hydropower projects, ask the following question whenever a big-ticket energy project is to be built in their vicinity: For whose benefit?

The history of large projects in India has demonstrated time and again that the people who live closest to them—those who may be displaced or suffer from pollution—rarely reap any benefit. By the government’s own admission, nearly half the people in India’s villages have no access to electricity. Nationally, more than 400 million people lack access. Worst affected are women—women who spend hours every day collecting wood for fuel, who are afraid to step outside after sunset because of the lack of electric lighting, and girls who drop out of school because studying after dark is impossible. None of this seems to matter to the people who set India’s energy policy. If it did, they would see the sense in developing alternative sources of energy.

Take an obvious solution: solar energy. In a country that enjoys more than 300 days of sunshine per year across most of its territory, it seems a mystery that solar energy has not taken a larger role in the nation’s energy mix. But it isn’t actually such a mystery. Solar is best utilized as a decentralized energy source, and governments prefer centralized, capital-intensive methods of electricity generation.

Paradoxically, India prides itself on its decentralized system of governance. Yet when it comes to an issue as crucial as energy policy, where a shift in priorities could transform the lives of millions of poor rural women, the government’s approach remains centralized.

Experiments with solar energy in India have already demonstrated the benefits of drawing on energy sources that allow for local control. In the southern state of Karnataka, for instance, a private company called Selco has developed a workable, replicable model for solar energy use. Essentially, Selco’s approach is to link technology with finance. Low-income households in small towns where people struggle with unreliable electricity supply can get bank loans to purchase solar panels. They pay off the loans in installments, meanwhile benefitting from much-needed power.

This sort of approach to energy provision has proved very useful for women vendors who live on their daily earnings and who are often organized into self-help groups. Selco selects one vendor to provide with financial assistance for setting up a solar-charged battery bank. The woman rents these batteries on a daily basis to other vendors, enabling them to extend their hours of business beyond sunset. The additional income they earn more than covers the rent they pay. Because thousands of self-help groups exist across India, such an approach could be easily replicated.

In the desert state of Rajasthan, middle-aged village women are trained as solar mechanics through an initiative of Barefoot College, a decades-old nongovernmental organization that works on rural issues. The women learn how to install, maintain, and repair solar panels and lighting. These women, scores of them so far, have introduced solar energy to their villages. And Barefoot College, by choosing to train women, has guaranteed that the expertise remains in the villages (men are more likely to go elsewhere to find work). For remote villages, where chances of getting electricity through the grid are extremely poor, this decentralized approach is particularly appropriate.

One can make the criticism, and many people do, that small programs such as these cannot be scaled up past a certain level. But their small scale is the very point. Large-scale energy projects can leave holes so gaping that 400 million people fall through them. Decentralized energy systems, meanwhile, are adaptable to local needs—and in the bargain they empower women, demystify technology, and protect the environment.

However, in any developing country, women cannot be empowered nor their drudgery reduced solely by establishing systems that generate and distribute electricity. Systems of governance must also be taken into account.

Panchayati raj is a form of village-level government that India adopted via constitutional amendment in 1992. Today, more than 1 million women serve on local assemblies known as panchayats (Dhawan, 2012) and their participation makes a real and positive difference in the quality of local governance. According to a number of surveys (e.g., Sehgal, 2008) and reports (e.g., Hunger Project, 2000), female panchayat members typically try to ensure that development funds are used sensibly. If a choice is to be made between profit and community welfare, women usually favor the latter.

How is this relevant to energy? It is relevant in very concrete ways. I have interviewed women serving on panchayats and have seen the difference that their participation has made in local energy issues. For instance, in a cluster of villages in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, a woman elected as mukhiya, or head of the panchayat, decided to use development funds available to the panchayat to install solar lighting in common areas so women could feel safer after dark. And when women have a say in decisions there is a greater chance that their energy needs, such as for cooking fuel, will be addressed. Women panchayat members have insisted in some areas that community forestry projects focus on planting varieties of trees that fulfill their need for fuel wood rather than varieties that might be more commercially lucrative, such as men tend to prefer. And when women are offered reliable, renewable energy sources, they are usually the first to accept and indeed insist on them.

Decentralized energy systems like solar and microhydro, along with local control of such systems, can have a positive effect on poor women’s lives. But the larger challenge is to convince governments that they should adopt equitable and environmentally benign energy policies. Perhaps real change in this regard could be achieved by strengthening models of governance such as the panchayat system, in which women’s voices count.