improved status of women. Methods employed to test these hypotheses include instrumental variables, careful construction of control groups (e.g., through propensity score matching), differencein-difference, and fixed effects estimation based on panel data. Because these are recent studies, most results have not yet appeared in the peer-reviewed literature. They include Gonzalez-Eiras and Rossi (2007) on health outcomes in Argentina; IEG (2008) on health knowledge and behaviors in a crosssection of countries; ADB (2010) on a range of health, education, time allocation, and empowerment outcomes in Bhutan; Khandekar et al. 2009a and b on education in Bangladesh and Vietnam; Jensen and Oster (2009) on the impact of cable television (made possible by electrification) on women‘s status in rural India; and perhaps most often cited, Dinkelman (forthcoming) on employment in South Africa and Grogan and Sadanand (2009) on fertility in Guatemala. With the exception of Gonzalez-Eiras and Rossi (2007), most of these studies focus on rural electrification, which is more likely than urban electricity projects to present sufficient variation in space and time to allow identification of impacts. In the following sections, we summarize the evidence from these studies of gender-differentiated impacts of electricity, beginning with the impacts of electricity in the home and ending with impacts of electricity in the community and of women‘s involvement on the supply side of energy, including motive energy. The specific methodologies underlying these findings are reported in footnotes.

# **_4.2.2 Time allocation and employment_**

**A few studies convincingly identify gender-differentiated, causal impacts of rural electrification. Dinkelman finds that electrification of rural communities in South Africa results in a 9 percentage point increase in female employment, but no comparable increase in male employment (Dinkelman forthcoming).  Grogan and Sadanand (2009) obtain a similar estimate of a 9 percentage-point increase in female employment, versus no impact on male employment, from rural electrification in Guatemala.  Both studies attribute this largely to the fact that electricity frees up women’s time by increasing the efficiency of domestic chores, especially cooking.  These results are broadly consistent with other studies that draw on large samples of electrified and nonelectrified households and control for numerous potential confounders.  For example, ADB (2010), Barkat (2002), and Chowdhury (2010) find that electrification reduces the time that women spend collecting fuelwood (in Bhutan) and increases the evening time they allocate to income generating activities and the probability of employment (in Bangladesh).  It is also consistent with the conclusion that electrification has greater positive impacts on women when accompanied by effective social marketing and financing schemes for appliances that reduce the time required for domestic chores (e.g., ESMAP 2004) or enterprise services for women to take advantage of electricity services (e.g., project in Niger Basin cited by World Bank 2010a).**

# _4.2.2.1 Time allocation to domestic chores_ **Studies find some impact of electrification on women’s time allocation, different from the impact on men’s time allocation, but not in all dimensions or in all ways expected.**

Many studies compare the average time allocation of rural men and women in households and communities that have electricity vs. those that do not (e.g., ESMAP and EnPoGen studies in India and the Philippines). In the case of activities that are not possible without electricity (such as watching TV in regions where batteries are not used to power TV), the time allocated to the activity is clearly a result of having electricity. However, in general, it is not possible to conclude anything about the causal impact of electricity from these comparisons, because differences in time allocation are just as likely to reflect the particular characteristics of households and communities that obtain electricity as they are to reflect the impacts of electrification.

Studies that control for confounders (characteristics that influence the probability of obtaining electricity as well as the outcome of interest) typically find some impact of electrification on women‘s 33