# **1 Motivation for Gender Anal sis of Household Ener Interventions** **<u>y gy</u>**

## **1.1 Introduction**

**The objective of this report is to review the academic literature to identify well-established links between energy access and welfare and gender implications. We consider three major areas of intervention: (i) increased access to woodfuels through planting of trees and forest management, (ii) increased access to improved cooking technologies, and (iii) increased access to electricity and motive energy, in order to provide a basis for gender sensitized analyses and identify opportunities to generate positive impacts for women in interventions sponsored by the World Bank Group (WBG) and others.**

That nearly three billion people still rely on solid fuels and that women and children are disproportionately affected by the resulting indoor air pollution<sup>5</sup> is clearly spelled out in recent Word Bank reports (e.g. World Bank 2011 and 2010a). This establishes the potential importance of the gender dimension for energy interventions. In this report, we describe and evaluate the nature of the evidence for gender implications of energy poverty and of energy interventions and then comment on opportunities for energy interventions that will empower women and improve their livelihoods.

We focus on whether interventions achieve their intended impacts and whether these are differentiated by gender (e.g., women‘s health improves more than men‘s health as a result of subsidies for new cooking technology), but we also note other benefits with differential impact on women, e.g. improved health, nutrition, or education of girls, as well as unintended consequences of interventions in the energy sector. As caveats, we note that first, the quantitative evidence base on causal impacts is thin. Second, the interventions that have a _greater_ impact on women than on men are not necessarily the interventions with the _greatest_ positive impact on women. And third, the impacts of past interventions under _ceteris paribus_ conditions may not identify the impacts that would be possible to achieve with complementary interventions that address various aspects of women‘s condition. Our discussion of options reflects these caveats and the reality that promoting gender equality and improving women‘s lives requires complementary interventions in the energy and in many other sectors (e.g., land tenure, forest management, education, and health).

The bulk of this report is a review of the academic literature on the links between energy access and welfare, with gender implications. The focus is on three major areas of intervention: (i) increased access to woodfuels through planting of trees and forest management, (ii) increased access to improved cooking technologies and (iii) increased access to electricity and motive power. After reviewing the evidence, we offer concluding reflections and discuss potential implications. But first we establish a basis for the reviews by introducing some basic facts about household energy access, examining whether and when female-headed households may respond differently to interventions, and discuss methodological challenges.

## **1.2 Household energy choices and expenditures**

**_1.2.1 Household energy use patterns in developing countries_**

**Rural electrification is particularly lacking in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it is a widely acknowledged policy goal, with 68 developing countries having explicit targets for electricity access.  In most countries, electricity is not used for cooking, and therefore does not directly substitute for polluting**

> 5 Also WHO/UNDP (2009) notes that 44% of deaths due to indoor air pollution from solid fuels are children, and 60% of adult deaths are women.

1