CORDIS Archive
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Woman power
Providing electricity to the rural poor in developing countries can relieve women of a great deal of heavy work. Case studies reported by the United Nations Development Programme show that it can also bring economic and social benefits. Two billion people in developing countries have no access to electricity supplies and have to use wood, dung or crop waste for heating and cooking. This places a heavy burden on women, who usually have the job of gathering fuel, fetching water and preparing food by hand. These tasks are time-consuming and tiring but do not count as productive or valuable work.
An electricity service would improve the lot of these women in many ways. It could run a water pump and a food grinder, which would free up more time as well as that saved by not having to collect fuel. Light in the evening would help families to study and get qualifications. Women would then be able to start local projects and small businesses, improving their status and self-esteem as well as their standard of living. Lack of electricity also brings health and social risks and correlates closely with poverty. Children are more likely to be kept home from school to help with the chores. There is less hope of local employment, encouraging the drift from rural areas to cities.
Women as energy entrepreneurs
This report was produced in a United Nations Development Programme initiative supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The UNDP has promoted sustainable energy in response to the Rio Earth Summit of 1992. Sustainable energy strategies need to take account of the specific problems faced by women, who are in turn likely to support them. They can easily see that as they use up local wood, they have to travel further for fuel and deforestation get worse. This book examines eight case studies in Africa and the Indian sub-continent designed to improve the access of women to energy services. The lessons it draws about how they can be made as effective as possible under local conditions will benefit aid agencies, policy makers and civil society groups. If women can become the suppliers of energy devices, they can gain employment as well as energy. One such project has brought electric lighting to remote islands in Bangladesh beyond the reach of the grid. Local women learned how to make cheap fluorescent lights run by small batteries in a factory cooperative. The lights replace dangerous kerosene lamps for lighting homes, shops, fishing boats and mosques. The women also prepared business and marketing plans and now run the enterprise, although none had worked outside the home before. Solar recharging of batteries is being investigated and 20,000 of the lamps could soon be in use. A project in Mali has given rural villages independent diesel generators mounted on platforms. They provide power for traditional women's tasks, such as grinding food pastes and extracting shea butter, used in skin cream and chocolate. The village chiefs accept that the women must therefore control the generators, so they are in a position to start small businesses based on the products. They can also sell energy services to men to run equipment such as battery chargers, presses and welding machines. The aim is for 10% of rural villages to have generators, most with attached water and electricity distribution systems. Four other West African countries are likely to adopt similar schemes. Not all the cases presented are so positive, but progress is being made. It depends, though, on changing ingrained attitudes.
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