Although in most contexts, only a small fraction of the poorest women are part of female-headed households, this segment of the population has nonetheless been the subject of significant interest and concern from a gender perspective. The question is whether female-headed households face different constraints or have different preferences for adoption of new fuels, technology, and electricity. In this case, we might expect household decisions to more strongly reflect women‘s preferences, but also to be subject to the legal and cultural constraints on the women who head those households.

There is a substantial literature and mixed evidence on whether female-headed households tend to be poorer (Buvinic and Gupta 1997; Quisumbing et al. 1995; Fuwa 2006). There are both countries and categories of female-headed households (e.g., widows vs. married, urban vs. rural) for which this is the case, and others for which it is not. One reason to expect that female-headed households may be poorer, controlling for household size, is that their heads are more likely to be responsible both for generating income and for child care and domestic chores. However, the causal impact of having a female head on socio-economic status is difficult to establish, because of potential endogeneity (with the possible exception of widows, whose status could be considered due to random bad luck).

Where female-headed households are more likely to be poor, targeting either female-headed households or poor households can also have implications for the other category. For example, in Kenya, ―female heads of households constitute a higher proportion of the poor both in the rural (54.1% female vis-à-vis 52.5% for male heads) and urban areas (63.0% female vis-à-vis 45.9% for male heads). Also, female headed households rely more on the fuelwood than the male headed households. For instance, 81 percent of all female headed households used firewood compared to 68.1 percent for males,‖ according to the Population and Housing Census the Popular Report Aug 2002 as reported in Muchiri (2008). As a result, targeting an intervention to fuelwood users would also effectively target that intervention to female-headed households. Another implication of higher poverty rates among female-headed households is that when uptake of new technologies is income-elastic, female headed households will be less likely to adopt if (and because) they generally have lower incomes (e.g., kerosene and LPG in Andra Pradesh, ESMAP 2004).

In the Lao PDR Rural Electrification Project, it was found that female headed households made up 43% of poor households, who would not be able to afford fees for connecting to the electricity grid. According to World Bank (2010c), ―this led the project team to design a pilot component, known as _Power to the Poor_ , which targeted the poorest, especially the women-headed households. With initial support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Aus-AID, and Gender Action Plan funds, the national electricity company, EDL, set up a revolving loan fund to provide these households interestfree loans to cover 80 percent of their connection and wiring costs. All women-headed households were eligible for support. Within a few years, electrification rates in pilot areas increased by about half (from 63 to 90 percent) and more than a quarter for women-headed households (from 75 to 96 percent) (Boatman, J. et al. 2009).‖ Perhaps more relevant to program design is that the legal, cultural, or other institutional constraints faced by women may also affect the ability of female-headed households to switch fuels, adopt technology, or establish an electricity connection, even conditional on a given household income level (cf. Meinzen-Dick et al. 2010 conclusion that there is widespread empirical evidence of ―gender-based disparities in adoption of improved technologies including improved seed, inorganic fertilizer, chemical insecticide‖). For example, in countries where women cannot legally own land, this may limit access to credit and hence ability to make up-front investments (see examples in first issue of ―Gender Equality as Smart Economics‖ newsletter, World Bank 2008). FAO (2008) also notes that this lack of land ownership may prevent women and female-headed households from benefiting from new opportunities in the energy sector such as cultivation of biofuel (cf. evidence on productivity 7