Mapping the Intersection of Women’s Economic Empowerment, Care Work and Clean Energy

Dr. Kate Grantham

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to extend their heartfelt thanks to members of IDRC’s Sustainable Inclusive Economies team for their guidance and review, in particular, Carolina Robino, Flaubert Mbiekop, Martha Melesse, Walter Ubal and Bhim Adhikari. They also wish to thank Marcela Jaime Torres (Universidad de Concepción) for their generous feedback and contributions to this paper.

This work was commissioned by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.

Cover photo: “Bringing clean energy to rural India” by DFID - UK Department for International Development is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Introduction

Countries around the world are transitioning to clean energy systems derived from renewables such as solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal as a means to address climate change and achieve the energy-related commitments in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Climate Agreement. More than 770 million people, most of them in rural areas in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), have limited or no access to electricity, and 2.5 billion people lack access to clean fuels for cooking, lighting and heating (International Energy Agency (IEA, 2021). Women bear the greatest burden of this energy poverty due to existing social norms.

The lack of access to affordable and reliable clean energy places an increased burden on women’s time, which in turn limits their opportunities for education, paid work and entrepreneurship. Altogether, these factors undermine women’s economic empowerment (WEE) and gender equality, which in turn further prevents the adoption of clean energy resources (Pachauri and Rao, 2013; Fingleton-Smith, 2018).

cleaning, food production and collecting water and fuel – all of which are energy-intensive.

This paper explores the intersection of WEE, care work and clean energy, with a particular focus on LMICs. It begins by providing a conceptual framework which illustrates that initiatives addressing WEE, care work and clean energy are mutually reinforcing, even mutually dependent, constituting a virtuous circle. It then goes on to map the available research and evidence linking these issues, before unpacking the role of social norms in determining women’s ability to equally shape and benefit from the clean energy transition. It concludes by identifying areas for future work and research for actors interested in promoting a “triple win”: where clean energy access is improved, WEE is enhanced, and women’s heavy and unequal responsibility for care work is reduced and redistributed.

As the primary providers of household care work, women are often responsible for looking after children, older persons and persons with illness or disabilities; and for domestic tasks such as cooking,

Conceptual framework

The conceptual framework used in this paper builds on existing research and evidence linking different aspects of WEE, care work and clean energy. Most available literature has focused on a subset of these issues, rather than examining them collectively. For example:

Care work WEE

It is well-established that gender inequalities in households and the labour market are inextricably linked to care work, and initiatives to address the latter are a key driver of WEE (Ferrant, 2014; Addati et al., 2018; Clark et al., 2019; OECD, 2019).

WEE clean energy

A growing body of work explores the relationship between WEE and clean energy access, including its impacts for women’s time use, education, employment and entrepreneurship in LMICs (O’Dell et al., 2015; Nelson and Kuriakose, 2017). This relationship is proven to be bi-directional, with WEE influencing women’s awareness, usage, and preferences for clean energy, just as clean energy access promotes WEE (Kumar, 2022; Torres, 2022).

Clean energy care work

Though less prevalent, there is some literature demonstrating that access to clean energy resources and technology can help to shift women’s time use, reduce the drudgery of household care work and even support the redistribution of care work to men when coupled with social norm interventions (Standal and Winther, 2016; Rost and Koissy-Kpein, 2018; ENERGIA, 2020). Likewise, the reduction and redistribution of care work has been shown to improve women’s participation in clean energy businesses, initiatives and investments (Khamati-Njenga, 2001; Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), 2018).

Our conceptual framework brings together work at the intersection of these issues in order to examine them holistically. Doing so illustrates a “virtuous circle”, where initiatives addressing WEE, care work and clean energy are shown to be mutually reinforcing, and even mutually dependent (Figure 1). In the sections below, evidence of this virtuous circle is documented and analyzed, along with the role that social norms play as mediators.

Research and evidence linking WEE, care work and clean energy

Based on the analysis of more than eighty academic and practitioner sources published since 2000, a key finding of this review is that empirical research at the intersection of WEE, care work and clean energy is limited (as noted above). Of the available research and evidence, most comes from practitioner sources such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international agencies and research institutes, with fewer academic publications devoted to exploring this intersection. The existing literature is synthesized below, including that which examines: the relationship between clean energy access and WEE; women’s roles as clean energy consumers, producers and decision-makers; barriers to women’s employment and entrepreneurship in clean energy (including care-related barriers); policies and solutions to help level the playing field for women; the impact of clean energy technologies on care work; and women’s role as change agents in the clean energy transition.

Clean energy access and WEE

There is by now a large body of literature documenting the impact of access to traditional energy sources on WEE, and that literature has been summarized

elsewhere (e.g. Rewald, 2017; ENERGIA, 2019). While the literature on clean energy access and WEE is comparatively limited, it is growing, including some research that documents its impacts on women’s time use, education, employment and entrepreneurship in LMICs.

Time use

Improved access to affordable and reliable clean energy can free up women’s time for leisure, education, and economic activities.

The introduction of energy-efficient appliances such as electric sewing machines, kettles, grinders, mills, blenders and clean cookstoves can significantly reduce the burden and drudgery of domestic tasks like cooking, cleaning, tailoring and food processing (IBRD, 2017; ENERGIA, 2020). Currently, women in LMICs spend on average four hours each day cooking with inefficient stoves (UN Women, 2018). While there is a great deal of heterogeneity when it comes to the benefits of having access to clean cooking technology, one study from South Asia found that access to clean cookstoves could reduce women’s time spent cooking

by one hour and ten minutes each day (Practical Action, 2015). In Nigeria, a timeuse survey found that it takes women two to three hours each day to prepare grains for pounding, and two hours each day to grate a basin of cassava by hand – tasks that a grinder could process in just one minute (Kes and Swaminathan, 2006).

Access to clean energy can also reduce or eliminate the need for women to spend time collecting household resources like water and fuel. It takes women in LMICs an average of 1.4 hours each day to collect fuel (i.e. wood, crop waste, charcoal, coal, or dung) for cooking, lighting and heating (UN Women, 2018). Figures are particularly high throughout much of South Asia and Africa. For example, in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, women spend upwards of 2.5 hours each day collecting fuel (Bloomfield, 2014). In Sierra Leone, Niger, Cameroon and Senegal this figure rises to more than three hours each day (IEA, 2017). Moreover, the loads that women carry are extremely physically demanding; in Africa, women carry fuel loads that weigh as much as 25–50 kilograms (UNEP, 2017). The IEA (2017) estimates that achieving clean cooking solutions for all would save roughly one hour per day of backbreaking labour collecting and hauling fuel for women gaining access. Over one year, this would save more than 100 billion hours globally.

There are a range of other benefits associated with clean energy access and women’s time use. For example, the need

to collect fuel, water and other household resources can expose women to injuries, attacks by wild animals and even sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in resource-scarce contexts where they must travel to remote or isolated areas (UNIDO and UN Women, 2013; Njenga et al., 2021). In humanitarian settings especially, resource collection tasks can put women at risk of sexual harassment or assault (UNHCR, 2016; OECD, 2021). A study from Chad found 42% of the 673 refugee households surveyed reported incidents of SGBV during firewood collection over a six-month span (Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, 2016). Women are also more exposed to health risks from the use of biomass, charcoal, kerosene and other traditional fuel sources because of their household care responsibilities. Close to four million people, mainly women and children, die prematurely each year from household air pollution caused by using traditional fuels (UN Women, 2021).

Education

Women’s time spent managing and collecting household energy resources is time that cannot be spent investing in their education and vocational skills, which are key enablers for WEE. For girls, who are often responsible for helping with domestic tasks, clean energy access is associated with improved school enrollment and educational achievement (Modi et al., 2005, p. 24; Lambrou and Piana, 2006). For example, in India,

research found that rural household electrification had a positive impact on school enrollment for girls due to the ability to reallocate domestic tasks to the evening (van de Walle et al., 2013). Similar results were observed in Brazil, where girls in rural areas with access to electricity were 59% more likely to complete primary education by the time they are 18 years old than those without (O’Dell et al., 2015). In Zanzibar, the installation of electrified water pumps in several villages led to a significant improvement in girls’ school attendance because they were freed from the task of collecting water. This resulted in parents starting to send their daughters to school to the same extent as sons (Winther, 2008). There is also some evidence that the introduction of solar lamps can increase girls’ study time at night (Gray et al., 2016; Sharma and Choudhary, 2019), but this evidence is mixed and the potential benefits appear to be context-specific (Stojanovski et al.,

2021). Access to education further leads to changes in knowledge, self-confidence, attitudes and behaviours, and is a key driver in shifting social norms (or of norms becoming less strict) (Marcus, 2018, p. 11). UN Women, 2013; Njenga et al., 2021). In humanitarian settings especially, resource collection tasks can put women at risk of sexual harassment or assault (UNHCR, 2016; OECD, 2021). A study from Chad found 42% of the 673 refugee households surveyed reported incidents of SGBV during firewood collection over a sixmonth span (Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, 2016). Women are also more exposed to health risks from the use of biomass, charcoal, kerosene and other traditional fuel sources because of their household care responsibilities. Close to four million people, mainly women and children, die prematurely each year from household air pollution caused by using traditional fuels (UN Women, 2021).

“Enlightening study in rural Orissa” by DFID - UK Department for International Development is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Employment

The global transition to clean energy has the potential to become a major source of employment for women. Although women are currently unrepresented in the clean energy sector (as outlined below), this is slowly changing, and the number of jobs in solar, hydropower, and wind is growing rapidly, with the potential to reach 15–24 million jobs by 2030 (Pearl-Martinez, 2020, p. 12–13). As Nelson and Kuriakose (2017) observe:

In many areas, women are finding work in the construction, operation, or maintenance of large-scale renewable energy utilities in energy generation, transmission, or distribution. Women may also find formal or informal (intermittent or contract) employment along the energy value chain (e.g. installation, billing, meter reading, and collection)... [as well as] indirect employment in allied industries and those that provide services for the energy sector, such as the construction of large-scale renewable energy infrastructure, and services such as restaurants, catering for workers, health and social services, and temporary housing. (p. 2–3)

Job gains in renewable energy are anticipated to outweigh job losses in traditional fuel in the coming decades

(IRENA and ILO, 2021, p. 88). However, the creation of new jobs in renewable energy will not necessarily occur in the same timespan, location (community, country, or region), or sector of the economy where losses occur, with skill gaps emerging. Moreover, most renewable energy jobs are expected to be in manufacturing, construction and engineering fields, where women are significantly underrepresented (Mortenson and Boyland, 2019, p. 1). Targeted policies and initiatives will be needed to address these misalignments and promote access to training and employment opportunities for women in the clean energy transition.

Outside the clean energy sector, women’s employment opportunities can be enhanced by gaining access to electricity as it reduces the time and drudgery associated with domestic tasks, freeing them up for other productive work. Research from a number of studies has shown that access to electricity has an even greater impact on women’s employment than it does for men’s (Glinski et al., 2017, p. 13). In Brazil, researchers found that increased access to electricity enhanced employment opportunities for both men and women, but that women benefitted the most, as the use of electric appliances freed up time spent on household chores (O’Dell et al., 2015). Likewise, in Nicaragua, access to electricity was found to increase the likelihood of rural women working outside the home by approximately 23%, with no significant increase for men (Grogan and Sadanand,

2013). In South Africa, providing electricity to rural communities was associated with an increase in female employment by 9 percentage points, but only a 3.5 percentage point increase in male employment (Dinkelman, 2011). While the results tend to agree that women’s employment increases with electrification as compared to men’s, women continue doing most of the unpaid household care work (Pueyo and Maestre, 2019). Inconclusive evidence is also found for improvement in women’s job quality and earnings from electrification (Dinkelman, 2011; van de Walle et al., 2013; Dasso and Fernandez, 2015; Akpandjar and Kitchens, 2017).

Entrepreneurship

Compared to traditional energy sources, the distributed nature of smaller-scale, off-grid renewable energy systems offers tremendous opportunities for women’s entrepreneurship, especially in rural areas. In many rural communities, grid electrification only extends to spaces that are typically used by men (such as courtyards and agricultural areas), meaning women may not enjoy equal access or benefits (Dutta, 2003). With access to a reliable source of renewable energy at home, “women may develop or strengthen agricultural production or informal home-based enterprises, which may typically involve food production, processing, and catering, or sewing and clothing repairs” (Nelson and Kuriakose,

2017, p. 3). In India, access to energyefficient stoves and solar lanterns was found to increase income-generating opportunities for women in areas such as tailoring, tutoring, catering and homebased piecework (Baruah, 2015). In Zambia, early research with rural women farmers found that the provision of solar egg incubators enabled participants to increase their hatch rate, raise more chickens, diversify their incomes and improve their overall livelihoods (Fund for Innovation and Transformation, 2022). Furthermore, research connected to Solar Sister’s programming in Tanzania found that 100% of female solar entrepreneurs reported an increase in control over household financial decisions and children’s education, and felt more respected in their communities, while 96% felt more respected in their household (Gray et al., 2016, p. 23). This speaks to the potential of clean energy entrepreneurship to promote women’s agency, selfconfidence and household decisionmaking power.

There are also opportunities for women to become entrepreneurs along the clean energy value chain. In Nigeria, Solar Sister’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Project supported 200 formerly internally displaced women to become energy entrepreneurs. Within the first six months they sold over 4,000 renewable energy products and educated their communities about the benefits of renewable energy solutions (Solar Sister, 2020). In India, initiatives led by The Energy Resources

Institute (TERI) and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), respectively, created opportunities for women entrepreneurs to earn an income from selling, renting and repairing solar lanterns and cookstoves (Baruah, 2015). However, the most successful women in these initiatives tended to be from better-off families in rural and urban communities, engaging in entrepreneurship as a means of supplementing a male breadwinner’s income.

This speaks to the importance of applying an intersectional lens to research on clean energy (Johnson et al., 2020), including the impact of factors such as age, race, class, caste, disability, marital status, migration status, indigenous status and so forth, on women’s ability to access clean energy and leverage it for entrepreneurship opportunities.

Tracking women’s roles in clean energy

Available evidence on women’s roles as consumers, producers and decision-

makers in clean energy is outlined below. However, a key takeaway of this review, and others, is the need to improve the quality and availability of data tracking women’s roles in clean energy in order to inform evidence-based interventions and policy-making (see, for example, ENERGIA et al., 2018; C3E and IEA, 2019; ENERGIA, 2019). Household data on women’s access to and control over clean energy resources is not widely available, partly because governments do not collect adequate data on household and income-generating energy usage and needs, let alone intrahousehold allocations (SEforALL, 2018, p. 19; Data2X and Grantham, 2020, p. 3). Information on women’s employment in the clean energy sector is also difficult to come across. This is primarily because jobs in clean energy tend to be scattered across different sectors and areas of employment such as manufacturing, construction, sales, installation, operations and maintenance, and are seldom captured in national statistics (Baruah, 2017a, p. 19; IEA and ILO, 2021, p. 85). Gender-disaggregated employment data are especially hard to find, with no national data sets available that provide exact or even approximate numbers of women employed in informal jobs or activities related to the clean energy sector (ENERGIA, 2019, p. 12). In LMICs, where the informal sector accounts for up to 85% of total employment (ILO, 2019), this is a critical gap in the information needed to understand and advance women’s roles in clean energy.

Women’s role as consumers

As consumers, women’s access to and control over energy resources is determined by social norms governing their household decision-making power. Although women are often responsible for providing household energy through unpaid care work, men can still be the main decision-makers regarding energyrelated purchases (Dutta, 2003, p. 10). Studies have shown that clean energy investments benefiting women first and foremost may not necessarily be the top priority for male decision-makers (Danielsen, 2012; Fingleton-Smith, 2018).

For example, in rural areas of Kenya, Nepal, and India, Winther et al. (2018, 2020) found that women have less control over decision-making about solar-powered appliances and lighting because men typically paid subscription fees and registered as the customer. This was reflected by deprioritized kitchen lighting, purchases of gender-neutral or “male” appliances over “female” appliances and norms around women’s ownership of items. In evaluating the impact of two initiatives enabling poor rural and urban households in India to become users of renewable energy technologies, Baruah (2017b) observed:

“Participants from Liberia and Malawi at the end of their six-month solar engineering course” by UN Women Gallery is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Energy-efficient cookstoves can create much bigger improvements in health and living conditions for poor households than solar lanterns can. However, because the enduser of a cookstove is usually a poor woman, with limited purchasing power and lower social status, the family’s lighting needs and the greater economic power of men within the household tend to be prioritized. (p. 2–3)

It is also worth noting that, due to existing social norms, women’s energy choices often put themselves at a disadvantage. Evidence suggests that women tend to be more sensitive to price than men, are less willing to spend money on cooking technologies and are more likely to put the needs of the household above their own personal preferences (Miller and Mobarak 2013, Zahno et al. 2020).

Discriminatory social norms that prevent women from owning land, property and other assets can further limit their access to and control over clean energy solutions introduced at the household level (UNIDO and UN Women, 2013).

All of this suggests that social norms must be addressed in order for clean energy initiatives targeting women as consumers to succeed in reaching and benefiting them.

Women’s roles as producers

As producers, women are underrepresented at all levels of the clean energy value chain and the sector is heavily dominated by men. A global survey conducted by IRENA (2019) shows that women account for 32% of full-time jobs in the renewable energy sector. Notably, this figure is substantially higher than the 22% average for women in the traditional energy sector, suggesting that women may have a greater interest in, or access to, employment in renewables. However, the share of women’s employment in clean energy varies significantly across countries (SEforALL, 2018), so it is not possible to generalize or draw firm conclusions at this time.

Gender segregation is also a major source of inequality in the clean energy sector. The aforementioned survey by IRENA found that women are disproportionately tracked into “feminized” occupations in administrative and support services within the clean energy sector, comprising 45% of these positions, compared to just 28% of technical positions that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) training (IRENA, 2019). The gender gap in technical positions can be partly explained by the low representation of female students in STEM subjects. According to UNESCO (2017), only 35% of STEM students in higher education globally are women.

Beyond job numbers, limited information is available regarding the nature and quality of women’s (or men’s) employment in clean energy,with respect to wages, benefits, job security, labour rights and occupational health and safety in the clean energy sector (IRENA and ILO, 2021, p. 85). Whether women’s jobs are in fact decent and high quality is a key indicator of their economic empowerment in the clean energy sector and should be a priority for future research and data collection.

Women’s role as decisionmakers

As with most sectors of the economy, women in clean energy are underrepresented as decision-makers in senior leadership and management positions and on corporate boards (C3E and IEA, 2019; IRENA, 2019; UN Women, 2021). A survey of rooftop solar companies in India and qualitative interviews with women employees found that only onethird of companies surveyed had a female board member, and none had more than one (IEA and CEEW, 2019, p. 13). Moreover, women represented just 12% of senior management and 17% of mid-level management positions in the sector.

Numbers are also low for women in clean energy policy-making and governance. A study analyzing 72 countries found that women only represent 6% of ministerial positions responsible for national energy policies and programs (USAID and IUCN,

2014). Moreover, administrative data tracking women’s participation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) shows that in 2021 the percentage of women across all national delegations was just 38% (with the lowest representation in Africa and Asia, between 30% and 35%) and only 13% of Heads of Delegations were women (Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), 2022).

Based on analysis of UNFCCC data since 2009, WEDO projects that gender parity in national delegations will not be achieved until 2040, and gender parity in Heads of Delegations will not be achieved within the forecastable future.

Barriers to women’s employment and entrepreneurship in clean energy

As more countries transition to clean energy systems, new opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship are being created. Renewable energy employment worldwide reached 12 million in 2020, up from 11.5 million in 2019 despite the slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (IRENA and ILO, 2021), and employment in the sector is expected to continue growing rapidly almost everywhere in the world. However, as Baruah (2017b) has cautioned, “women’s ability to take advantage of new clean energy-related employment options is

often constrained by legal or social barriers that limit their education, property rights, land tenure, and access to credit” (p. 22). Women’s low level of participation in clean energy underscores the importance of identifying and addressing the different barriers they face.

Gendered barriers

Many of the gendered barriers to women’s employment and entrepreneurship in clean energy highlighted in the literature are similar to those women face in the traditional energy sector and elsewhere in the economy. Although these barriers are context-specific, they frequently include: lack of access to capital, funding and credit; barriers to financial and enterprise development services; lower levels of education, training and business experience; isolation from maledominated business networks; and limited female role models and mentors (Glemarec et al., 2016; Baruah, 2017a; IRENA, 2019; Shankar et al., 2020). Other known barriers for women are more specific to the clean energy sector. For example, studies show that women are excluded from employment opportunities in clean energy due to gender stereotypes about the kinds of jobs that are safe and appropriate for women versus men (Glinski et al., 2017; IEA and CEEW, 2019), and assumptions about women’s willingness or ability to work in certain positions (Baruah and BiskupskiMujanovic, 2017; IRENA, 2019).

In particular, women are deemed less competent to hold technical jobs in clean energy than their male counterparts, even with the same or superior qualifications and work experience (Cecelski, 2000; Baruah, 2017a).

Care-related barriers

Less well-documented are the ways that social norms assigning the responsibility for care work to women can be a major barrier to their engagement in clean energy businesses, initiatives and investments. The main care-related barriers that women face are time poverty, mobility constraints and the lack of a supportive policy environment for care –outlined below.

Time poverty

As with other sectors, time poverty is a major barrier to women’s employment and entrepreneurship in clean energy. Women in rural communities and low-income countries spend up to 14 hours each day on unpaid care activities (five times more than men) (Karimli et al., 2016), which has a direct impact on their schedules and the amount of time they can dedicate to clean energy initiatives, training, employment and entrepreneurship activities (SEforALL, 2018; Clark, 2021). In Kenya, a program involving women entrepreneurs in the distribution of fuel-efficient stoves

found that a primary barrier to women’s participation was that they did not have enough time and were unable to be away from home for long periods due to domestic and community care responsibilities (Khamati-Njenga, 2001).

For some women, time constraints due to caregiving prevent them from pursuing formal work in the clean energy sector, opting instead for informal work that is more flexible and easily combined with their care responsibilities, but often lower paid with poorer working conditions. Even within the formal sector, the greater likelihood that women will take time off work for childbirth and caregiving contributes to their concentration in lower-paying jobs and junior positions in the clean energy workforce (IRENA, 2019, p. 42).

Mobility constraints

Women’s responsibilities for care work can limit their mobility, and thus their ability to work outside the home or community, attend training activities, or engage in selling, installing and maintaining renewable energies (Nelson and Kuriakose, 2017, p. 2). Employment in the clean energy sector can require significant travel and time away from home, which is difficult for women with caregiving responsibilities, especially those with young children. For example, “the locations of large renewable energy construction projects tend to be determined in part by the geography of natural resources and are often in isolated areas, with no provisions for the families of workers” (Baruah, 2017b, p. 24). Accessing transport for renewable

“Women Barefoot Solar Engineers of Africa” by Barefoot Photographers of Tilonia is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

energy training for the installation and maintenance of small-scale and off-grid renewable energy can also be challenging for women, particularly in rural areas where distances are great and transportation is limited, and in regions where discriminatory norms and practices further limit women’s mobility (World Bank and IEA, 2015). One study from India found that “office-based jobs without frequent travel or work at project sites are perceived to be more appealing to women in the solar sector” because of the mobility constraints imposed by care work (IEA and CEEW, 2019, p. 12).

Lack of care policies

The clean energy sector currently lacks a supportive policy environment for care, partly because it is in the early stages of development and has been molded around the needs of a predominantly male workforce. Women’s underrepresentation in the clean energy sector, especially in leadership and management positions, contributes to a lack of gender-responsive and family-friendly workplace policies and arrangements that support women in their socially-assigned role as primary caregivers (IRENA, 2019). Regarding support for childcare specifically, a study of India’s rooftop solar sector found:

Almost no company has identified the need for childcare facilities located within organisations, owing primarily to the lack of women

and nursing mothers in the sector and a pre-existing perception that childcare needs do not apply to men. Fewer women translates to a lesser expressed need for childcare facilities at work. (IEA and CEEW, 2019, p. 22)

The lack of supportive care policies can be an additional hurdle that discourages women from entering and remaining in the clean energy sector. There is a real risk of women lagging further behind if the clean energy agenda and sector fail to consider their unpaid care work as a deep-seated driver of inequality and socioeconomic exclusion.

Policies and solutions to level the playing field for women

Different policies and solutions have been proposed to help level the playing field for women and encourage their productive engagement in the clean energy sector. These solutions tend to focus on generic business supports, such as: gender-targeted funding, grants and training; gender quotas and targets for the employment of women at all levels; and supportive networks and mentorship opportunities (IEA, 2019; IRENA, 2019; Dutta, 2020; Shankar et al., 2020). There has also been some attention paid to the importance of family-friendly workplace policies and arrangements, including:

adequate paid maternity, paternity and parental leave; flexible work arrangements like part-time work schedules and longer lunch breaks; lactation rooms; on-site or nearby childcare; and policies promoting equal pay for equal work that do not penalize women who take time off for childbirth and caregiving (Baruah, 2017a; IEA and CEEW, 2019; IRENA, 2019). However, these types of workplace policies are most relevant for women employed in larger private and public sector organizations in the clean energy sector, as opposed to women informal workers or those in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

It has also been recommended that clean energy training, employment and entrepreneurship initiatives be tailored and scheduled around women’s childcare and domestic workloads, and generally be sensitive to women’s care responsibilities that may prohibit them from participating (IRENA, 2019, p. 14; Shankar, 2020, p. 35). The potential for time and labour-saving technologies to help enable women’s entry into the clean energy labour force should also be explored

These policies and solutions, particularly those targeting women’s care responsibilities, may be a step in the right direction. However, as Baruah (2017a) has noted with respect to women’s employment in clean energy:

Policy by itself cannot make men want to spend more time caregiving

if care work continues to be perceived as low-status feminized work. Neither can policy require women to give up their control over care, particularly over the raising of children, if they have been socialized to believe that children are their primary responsibility. (p. 6)

Unless underlying social norms assigning the responsibility of care work to women are addressed, any policies and solutions aimed at increasing women’s employment and entrepreneurship in clean energy may only serve to add to their overall workloads.

The impact of clean energy technologies on care work

Few studies have directly explored the impact of clean energy technologies on women’s heavy and unequal responsibility for care work. However, the limited available evidence demonstrates that increasing access to certain clean energy technologies can make some care tasks more efficient. For example, as outlined earlier, the introduction of energy-efficient appliances can reduce the time and drudgery associated with domestic tasks

like cooking, cleaning, tailoring, food processing and fuel collection (IBRD, 2017; ENERGIA, 2020). This is what spurs decisions around labour market participation, among other things. Other clean energy technologies – such as solar dryers, water pumps, composters, food dehydrators and rainwater purifiers –can further ease women’s care work in subsistence agriculture and household food production (Clancy et al., 2012).

Renewable lighting solutions, like solar lamps, can also offer women more flexibility in the sequencing of care tasks by allowing them to do more at night (Danielsen, 2012; IRENA, 2019, p. 14).

While clean energy technologies can help to reduce women’s time and labour spent on domestic tasks, they do not necessarily reduce women’s total hours of care work. For instance, research with rural women in Nepal found that the introduction of alternative energy technologies, including micro-hydro mills and clean cookstoves, led to a reduction in women’s time spent processing grains and collecting firewood, only to be re-allocated to perform additional housework (Mahat, 2004, 2011). Likewise, in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, 34.7% of women who were provided with clean cookstoves reported using the time they saved on cooking to tend to and care for their children, while just 9% reported more time for rest and leisure (Bloomfield, 2014). The same is true for renewable lighting solutions, which add flexibility and convenience to care work, but do not automatically lead to increased leisure

time for women, and may actually extend their workday (Daneilsen, 2012, p. 13).

To this end, Clancy et al. (2012) have concluded that “access to modern energy appears to enable women to fulfill their traditional roles (to their satisfaction and wellbeing) rather than bringing significant transformation in gender roles” (p. 20).

This highlights the importance of coupling access to clean and reliable energy with social norms interventions enabling sufficient time savings that are compatible with income-generating activities, either in the labour market or through entrepreneurship (as discussed below).

In addition, the introduction of clean energy technologies does not automatically lead to a more equitable redistribution of care work between men and women. As Rewald (2017) has explained, “an electrified water pump may mean that women and girls do not have to walk as far to fetch water, but it does not mean that they share the burden of fetching water with men” (p. 24). This is because masculine social norms prevent men’s participation in care work, which is considered to be low-status feminized work. Research from Oxfam’s Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care (WECare) program, which has been operating in over 25 countries in Asia and subSaharan Africa since 2013, shows that men’s perceptions of others’ approval has a major influence on their participation in care work. The following quote is from WECare research in Uganda:

Most people said that men ‘could not do care work’ because this was perceived ‘negatively’ by their community who would make fun of them, talk behind their backs or openly criticize them. Some men said that they could not cook or fetch firewood because they had never seen any other men doing this. (Rost, 2021a, n.p.)

Similar attitudes were observed within WE-Care programming in other countries, where men and women alike reported that men were most likely to do care work in situations where the community considered it acceptable (Rost and KoissyKpein, 2018).

Coupling clean energy technology and social norms interventions has been found to successfully promote men’s

participation in care work. This outcome was observed within WECare programming in Zimbabwe and the Philippines, which combined the distribution of time and labour-saving equipment with community-based activities to shift social norms (Table 1) (Leon-Himmelstine and Salomon, 2020). Male participants – who often initially believed that unpaid care work lessened their masculinity or was a sign of disrespect, lack of love or mockery – increased their time spent on care work tasks by an average of 50% (p. 61). Evidence from non-energy related programming in LMICs corroborates the potential impact of social norms interventions delivering culturally relevant education, media and advocacy activities for promoting men’s equal involvement in care work (Doyle et al., 2018; Harper et al., 2020; Promundo, 2021). Table 1:

the Philippines

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

• Training of ‘care champions’ (i.e. men, women, or couples willing to show public support for care)

• Door-to-door engagement and community/ school dialogues led by ‘care champions’

• Exposure to care-positive media messages through radio, television, and social media

Source: Leon-Himmelstine and Salomon, 2020

There is also research to suggest that the perception of clean energy technologies as “masculine” or “modern” may help to promote their adoption and use by men. A study in Uganda found that tools and equipment have the potential to increase men’s participation in care work by building on, rather than questioning, masculine social norms (Rost, 2021b). Men were more likely to engage in care activities that required big and heavy tools and equipment because it could “be seen as an expression of ‘men’s supposed greater strength’ and superior ‘technical competence’ and, thus, give men’s participation in care work a masculine flavour” (p. 47). Similarly, where the introduction of clean energy is seen as modern there may be motivation for men to take on certain care tasks. In studies from Laos (Kelkar and Nathan, 2005), South Africa (Annecke, 2005; Matinga 2010) and Zanzibar (Winther, 2008), husbands began to cook meals for themselves once their household was powered by electricity because cooking with electricity was seen as modern, efficient and convenient. In Sri Lanka, men were found to share in chores, such as ironing, after household electrification for similar reasons (Massé, 2003).

Where clean energy technologies can be tailored to local social norms they have a better chance of success in encouraging men’s participation in care work. For example, in Zimbabwe men are traditionally reluctant to squat, kneel, or bend down to cook, for fear of being

ridiculed. As a result, WE-Care promoted fuel-efficient stoves that can be used while standing and found that more men were willing to help with cooking (Hall, 2020, p. 18). Likewise, in the Philippines, WE-Care found that men will engage in water collection when they have access to certain types of equipment, like bicycles and wheelbarrows, but will not carry it on their head as women often do (Rost and Koissy-Kpein, 2018, p. 20). These findings speak to the importance of tailoring the introduction of new technologies to the local context and social norms in order to make it more acceptable for men to participate in care work.

Conversely, without continuous work on social norms, initiatives providing clean energy technologies could unintentionally lead to women spending more time on care work, or to care work being redistributed to younger girls in the household (Hall et al., 2020). In the Philippines and Zimbabwe, some men participating in Oxfam’s WE-Care program cited improvements in water and laundry infrastructure as a reason to reduce their own time spent on care work, arguing that women or children now required less help for physically demanding tasks (Leon-Himmelstine and Salomon, 2020, p. 12). Social norms change is also not straightforward and initiatives aimed at redistributing care work are likely to be met with resistance, pushback or suspicion from some community members (Barron et al., 2020, p. 64; Rost, 2021a). For example, a study in Zimbabwe found that

men rejected the use of solar cookers by their wives because technology is traditionally seen as a male preserve, and husbands expressed reservations about what their wives would do with the time saved by the introduction of solar cookers (Green, 2001). To this end, “more research is needed to understand social norms and perceptions related to types of equipment and types of unpaid care work, and how technology can be used to challenge perceptions and promote the redistribution of care work” (Rost and Koissy-Kpein, 2018, p. 19).

Women’s role as change agents in the clean energy transition

Much of the available literature on gender and energy has treated women in LMICs as either victims (of energy poverty) or beneficiaries (of energy access). While it is true that women bear the greatest burden of energy poverty as the primary providers of household care work, and may have the most to gain from energy access, such representations are problematic for how they strip women of their agency and depict them as passive stakeholders within development initiatives. Moreover, framing clean energy solutions at the household level as meeting “women’s needs” can also undermine efforts to achieve gender equality and WEE by reinforcing the gendered division of labour (Baruah, 2017b, p. 4), and further entrenching the idea that care work is “women’s work”.

In recent years, a number of actors working in this space have called for new approaches that position women not as victims or beneficiaries, but as key drivers and change agents in the clean energy transition (e.g. Dutta et al., 2017; ENERGIA et al., 2018).

They argue that “an integrated set of actions is required to remove genderspecific barriers and shift the current paradigm from one where women are passive providers and users of energy, to one where they are agents of change in promoting sustainable energy technologies and their productive uses” (UN Women and UNEP, 2016, p. 1). Otherwise, “there is simply no guarantee that women, especially those living in poverty, will actually receive the benefits of new sources of renewable energy” (Action Aid and WEDO, 2016, p. 2).

Women have a leading role to play as change agents in a sustainable and inclusive clean energy transition – as energy consumers, producers, entrepreneurs and decision-makers. Enabling this shift will require actors to tackle the gendered and care-related barriers that obstruct women’s access to clean energy resources, solutions, employment and entrepreneurship (outlined above). It will also require a better understanding and recognition

of how the clean energy sector itself can benefit from meaningfully engaging women across the value chain, owing largely to their household energy and care responsibilities.

As the primary managers of household energy, women can play a central role in the transition to clean energy by shaping consumption patterns. Survey research with 5,000 households across Ethiopia, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania shows that although women are not the principal decision-makers in purchasing household energy technology, they do hold significant influence in deciding which types of products to buy and how much is spent on them (Alstone et al., 2011). Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that women are more inclined toward using renewable energy than men. For example,

research from Nigeria (Ogwumike and Ozughalu, 2014) and from South Asia (Practical Action, 2015) has found that female-headed households are more likely to adopt renewable energy sources than male-headed households.

Women’s engagement across the energy value chain is also critical for expanding both the scale and the quality of the sector (UNIDO and UN Women, 2013). Studies have found that there are advantages in involving women from start to finish in the design of clean energy products and solutions because they hold first-hand knowledge of household and community energy needs (Gill et al., 2012, p. 11; IEA, 2017, p. 27). Social norms also allow for better interactions with female customers. For example, women may feel more confident speaking with female sales

“A solar powered future” by DFID - UK Department for International Development is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

agents who better understand their energy use and can provide them with more comfortable spaces to learn and discuss their concerns (Gill et al., 2012). The same is true for the distribution, installation and repair of clean energy solutions, which can require agents to enter households during hours when men may not be home. For nearly twenty years, solar energy company, SELCO India, has trained female technicians to enter the homes of customers to repair solar lanterns and cookstoves in communities where it would be inappropriate for men to do so (IRENA, 2019, p. 70).

Likewise, analysis of data from more than 1,000 rural enterprises in Rwanda found that women entrepreneurs sold between 36% and 60% more rechargeable solar lighting units than men (Barron et al., 2020). When IFC’s Lighting Asia initiative in India developed a network of women solar entrepreneurs to help overcome the cost and awareness challenges of selling in last-mile markets, sales increased by 30% (IFC, 2016).

The expansion of clean energy, especially off-grid renewable energy, to poor households in remote, lastmile communities may depend on women’s involvement as employees and entrepreneurs (Glemarec et al. 2016; Gray et al., 2016; Dutta, 2018, 2020). Women’s responsibility for household energy and care work affords them a nuanced understanding of their customer base, and their social networks enable greater outreach and rapport with women customers in rural and hard-to-reach areas (Pearl-Martinez, 2020, p. 17). In Kenya, research by the Clean Cooking Alliance (2015) found that women entrepreneurs sold three times as many clean cookstoves as men because they appeared more trustworthy, were more knowledgeable about cookstoves, and had a comparative advantage reaching out to other women end-users in their social networks.

Finally, women’s leadership in the energy sector, governance and policy-making is critical to ensure a clean energy transition that is sustainable and inclusive for all. Many believe that women’s involvement in the higher echelons of the clean energy industry will enable energy companies to produce products and services that are better targeted and more easily adopted by female customers, which, in turn, will increase women’s access to energy (Shankar et al., 2020, p. 28). There is evidence that women tend to favour local energy production, prioritizing households and communities over largescale centralized commercial energy infrastructure projects (Action Aid and WEDO, 2016, p. 9). Their role as decisionmakers is key to the development of policies and plans that are sufficiently gender and care-responsive, and contextappropriate. In fact, research has shown that without women’s involvement as stakeholders and decision-makers, renewable energy initiatives risk being inappropriate and failing (Cecelski, 2000).

Upacking the role of social norms

A throughline in this paper has been to highlight the critical role of social norms in determining women’s ability to equally shape and benefit from the clean energy transition. The available research and evidence has shown that social norms constrain women’s engagement at every stage of the energy value chain. As consumers, women’s access to and control over energy resources is restricted by their household decision-making power. As producers, gendered and carerelated barriers and biases limit women’s employment and entrepreneurship in the clean energy sector, as well as their participation in STEM education and careers. As decision-makers, gender inequality hinders women’s representation and leadership in the energy sector, and in energy governance and policy-making. Moreover, the ability of clean energy technologies and solutions to foster a reduction and redistribution of care work is constrained by masculine social norms that make it unacceptable for men to participate in care work.

major structural challenges. On this point, Johnson et al. (2019) have noted:

Where gendered energy approaches are pursued, they typically focus more on technological changes – such as replacing candles and traditional cookstoves with cleaner and more efficient alternatives –assuming these technologies to be gender-neutral. In many cases, the focus is also on meeting women’s immediate – or ‘practical’ – needs that affect their daily lives and practices…. Meanwhile, addressing the broader socio-cultural empowerment – or ‘strategic’ –needs required to transform gender divisions of labour, power, and control typically receives much less attention. (p. 1)

A key takeaway from this review is that clean energy initiatives do not take place in a vacuum, nor do they automatically tackle the deep-seated gender inequalities and social norms embedded within local contexts. Unfortunately, most clean energy initiatives have neglected to address these

Actors working at the intersection of WEE, care work and clean energy need to recognize and address social norms in the communities where they work in order to promote gender transformative change. Otherwise, they can unintentionally perpetuate existing structures of inequality and the gendered division of labour, and may only serve to add to women’s overall workloads.

Conclusion

Women have a leading role to play in a sustainable and inclusive clean energy transition – as energy consumers, producers, entrepreneurs and decisionmakers – provided that underlying social norms are addressed, especially their heavy and unequal responsibility for care work. On one hand, social norms assigning the responsibility for unpaid care work to women can be a major barrier to their engagement in clean energy businesses, initiatives and investments. There is a risk of women lagging further behind if the clean energy agenda fails to consider their unpaid care work as a deep-seated driver of inequality and socioeconomic exclusion.

On the other hand, access to clean energy resources can potentially alter long-standing social norms by reducing the drudgery of household care work and redistributing it more equitably between men and women. For example, as shown, the introduction of certain time and labour-saving technologies may be associated with men’s increased participation in care work, when they are coupled with targeted social norms

interventions. Therefore, initiatives addressing WEE, care work and clean energy must be recognized and approached as mutually reinforcing, even mutually dependent, constituting a virtuous circle.

Areas for future work and research

Several recommended areas for future work and research emerge from this review, based on existing knowledge and evidence gaps. They are particularly important for actors interested in promoting a “triple win”: where clean energy access is improved, WEE is enhanced and women’s heavy and unequal responsibility for care work is reduced and redistributed.

1

Recognize and address the virtuous circle of WEE, care work and clean energy: Future work should focus on the intersection of these issues, how they interact with and reinforce one another, and the role that social norms play as mediators. This work should also help to understand the role that key stakeholders (governments, donors, NGOs, the private sector, etc.) play in supporting this virtuous circle.

2

Identify the kinds of clean energy technologies, solutions and initiatives that are most effective for promoting a reduction and redistribution of women’s care work. Special attention should be paid to understanding the role of social norms and perceptions related to types of unpaid care work in specific contexts, and how different technologies, solutions and initiatives can be tailored to increase the acceptability of men’s participation in care work at the household level.

local, national and international levels, including within STEM education, the clean energy sector and energy policymaking and governance. This includes research documenting how the clean energy sector itself benefits from women’s participation, leadership and decision-making.

3

Examine the different types of care-related barriers to women’s employment and entrepreneurship in clean energy. Few studies have documented the ways that social norms assigning the responsibility for care work to women can be a major barrier to their engagement in clean energy businesses, initiatives and investments. Dedicated research is needed to explore the dynamics and impact of women’s time poverty, mobility constraints and the lack of a supportive policy environment for care, as well as other care-related barriers that are not addressed in the existing literature.

5

Focus on women’s energy entrepreneurship in the informal sector and in MSMEs. Most research examining women’s productive engagement in the clean energy sector is focused on their involvement in larger private and public sector organizations or in development initiatives. Less is known about women’s roles and experiences as clean energy employees and entrepreneurs in the informal sector and in MSMEs, or the specific barriers they face. This information is especially important for LMIC contexts, where the proportion of women informal workers and MSMEs is greater.

4

Explore effective strategies to promote women’s participation, leadership and decision-making in the clean energy transition. More work is needed to understand the types of policies and capacity-building tools that can be used to promote women’s representation in clean energy at the

6

Contribute to filling gender data gaps in clean energy. There is a pressing need for genderdisaggregated data and case studies documenting women’s roles as consumers, producers and decision-makers in clean energy in order to inform evidence-based interventions and policy-making. This includes gender data at the national, subnational, sectoral and household levels, as well as within clean energy initiatives.

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