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ENERGIA News Issue 2, April 1997

Letters to ENERGIA

The first issue of ENERGIA News has been received with great enthusiasm; the many letters, faxes and emails have shown the appreciation of a medium, like the newsletter, through which information on, and experiences with gender issues and sustainable energy development can be exchanged and disseminated.

Your requests, comments and suggestions provide ENERGIA and ENERGIA News with a valuable insight in the need for calendar event announcements (workshops, seminars/conferences, training courses), policy debates, project descriptions, case studies and articles on technologies in renewable energy, funding addresses, etc.

It is precisely the aim of ENERGIA News to make this kind of information and experience in this field of sustainable development, accessible to organisations and individuals working with, or interested in, women and energy and to bring the necessity for gender approaches in energy policy making to the attention of policy and decision makers. Please help us to achieve this goal and to continue the process of information and experience dissemination by sharing your experiences, thoughts and knowledge with us!

The need for genderising Wood Energy Data Base
Tools and awareness are both components of gender approaches, as discussed under the ‘Focus on Training’-section in ENERGIA News (issue 1). I would add that both depend on adequate information, which is still largely lacking. Availability of systematic data can help to redress common misconceptions and support sound policy making and interventions. This is true for gender issues as much as for wood energy development and even more so for the combination of the two. In Asia as in other parts of the world, wood energy supply and use is very much a women's issue, but this is not yet reflected in data bases available to the energy sector. What primary data needs to be genderised? The following are some examples.
When trends in types of fuel use are desegregated, this is often done by household income and size. However, more relevant would be a desegregation by women's income, while household size would have to be specified into family types, such as nuclear family, multi-generation family, extended family (several siblings with their partners and children), single-adult headed households, elderly people living alone, etc. Furthermore, when data on wood energy resources are included in an energy data base, land tenure systems are important. Here too, gender disaggregation is highly relevant. Is it the farmer who controls the land, or is it her husband? Another example is woodfuel use in the informal sector. From the perspective of wood energy development, it would be necessary to break down this category into male and female entrepreneurs.
Most surveys and questionnaires are still to be adapted in order to establish data bases which are adequate for developing energy policies. The question of how and to what extent gender differences should be addressed in such data bases has hardly been discussed, even though in many developing countries more than half of all energy consists of wood and biomass fuels, which is largely a woman's issue.
Mr. W.S. Hulscher, Chief Technical Advisor, FAO Regional Wood Energy Development Programme in Asia (RWEDP), 39 Maliwan Mansion, Phra Atit Road, Bangkok 10200, Thailand; Tel.+66.2.2802760, Fax +66.2.2800760, Email rwedp@ksc.net.th, RWEDP@field.fao.org

[Editors’ note: Any readers who have good examples of gender disaggregated energy data bases are welcome to write directly to the author or to ENERGIA News. We would be glad to publish any contributions on the subject].

Dear ENERGIA Editors:
I just received the latest issue of the “ENERGIA” newsletter. Thanks! It is a fantastic publication, and just the sort of information that I have been looking for. I (…)have met women in renewable energy who share my interest in gender, but this is the first international, organized effort I have come across. I am reminded of the phenomenon in many scientific fields in which discoveries can occur almost simultaneously around the world, independent of one another. In the same way, development specialists have been making the link between gender and renewable energy with little interaction for the past several years. I hope we have at last reached critical mass (no pun intended) with “ENERGIA.”
I work in Central America and Brazil on renewable energy for Winrock International. Winrock is a development institution based in Arkansas, USA that works throughout the world on five general issues: gender and leadership training, renewable energy, agriculture, natural resources management and forestry, and rural enterprise and employment. Since I joined Winrock almost two years ago, I have endeavored to “engender” the renewable energy program and collaborate with our gender division, with strong support from my colleagues and Winrock management.
One of the Renewable Energy Division's primary goals is to build capacity and transfer technology to developing countries. This strategy has emerged from seeing too many “technology drops” in developing countries, in which there is little local involvement and operation and maintenance issues are not considered (limiting the sustainability of projects). For this reason, we have established Renewable Energy Project Support Offices (REPSOs) in five countries: India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, and Guatemala. I work with the REPSOs in Brazil and Guatemala.
Ellen Kennedy, Country Coordinator for Brazil and Central America, Renewable Energy Division, Winrock International, 1611 N. Kent St., Suite 600, Arlington, VA 22209, USA; Tel. +703.525.9430 ext.646, Fax +703.243.1175, Email ebk@msmail.winrock.org

I'd like to draw your attention to a minor mistake in A. Reddy's article; the matrix lines are incorrectly named-or added-, which makes women's total energy input greater than the men's, even though the data set doesn't appear to show this!
I wish you every success,
Donna Green, 45 Glenmore Road, Paddington 2021, Sydney, Australia

[Editors’ note: We have received more comments about the incorrect matrix lines in Batliwala & Reddy's article Energy for Women and Women for Energy: A proposal for women's energy entrepreneurship and acknowledge your critical reading. The figures for the matrix lines ‘man’ and ‘woman’ should be reversed for agriculture, domestic, lighting and industry: women's total energy input is greater than the men's.]