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ENERGIA News Issue 2.2, May 1998

Meeting ENERGIA Members

Priyanthi Fernando
Executive Secretary with the International Forum for Rural Transport Development (IFRTD)

Interviewed by Joy Clancy

Priyanthi, maybe you could first tell us about your background, where you grew up and what sort of education you had?

I grew up in Sri Lanka in the city of Colombo. My childhood was pretty sheltered, not very different to most girls from middle class homes in the city. As a young girl though I had some interesting role-models. My mother, by all means a conventional housewife, was intensely involved in the work of the oldest women's organisation in the country: the Lanka Mahila Samiti (an association of rural women's societies). My father's two sisters were career women, one in the diplomatic service and the other in social work. I was brought up to believe that a good education was really important - and studied science at secondary school with Physics and Mathematics as my favourite subjects. However, at the end of my secondary schooling, I decided that I would rather work with people than machines or numbers - and opted for a course in Sociology at the University of Sri Lanka in Peradeniya (a town about 72 miles away from the city). My teachers were horrified that I was willingly giving up a potentially prestigious career - but I had lots of support from my family. The University was residential and living away from home I was able to learn about life as my contemporaries lived it. Most of them were from rural areas and had struggled to make it to university - studying under trying conditions. They represented the majority of the people of Sri Lanka and I had to struggle to come to terms with the privileged position I had enjoyed.

I know that you were working for a long time with ITDG Sri Lanka. Was this your first job? How did you get involved in a technical field like this?

No ITDG was not my first job. By the time I graduated I had decided to work in “development” and joined the Marga Institute - a development research organisation. I spent some time in Australia with my husband; while he studied I worked in the sales offices of two commercial firms. Then we returned to Sri Lanka and I did more sales work for an interior decorating company. The Lanka Mahila Samiti was looking for a project co-ordinator for a USAID funded Small Enterprise Development Project for Rural Women and I joined them.
When the Lanka Mahila Samiti project ended, I applied for the job as ITDG's first country representative in Sri Lanka, and (to my surprise) I was successful! When co-ordinating the small enterprise project for the Lanka Mahila Samiti, we often came unstuck when we had to find technical assistance for the women. The national technology organisations (such as the Industrial Development Board) were hopelessly bureaucratic and their limited funding restricted their ability to reach out to the remoter rural areas where most of the women in the Lanka Mahila Samiti lived. I saw that ITDG could have a very significant role in Sri Lanka. The technical aspect was initially somewhat daunting (I had left my Physics very far behind me!) - but I soon realised that “finding out what people are doing, and helping them do it better” involved as much an understanding of their social, economic and political context as it did of technology. I soon learned that technology has been mystified to mean something that only the technically qualified do - whereas people with limited resources and no formal qualifications are often inventing and modifying technologies in their day to day activities.

Where did the question of women and energy fit into your work there?

Renewable energy technologies are an ITDG strength and in Sri Lanka the energy programme was (and still is) ITDG's main activity. ITDG pioneered working with village communities to establish village electricity schemes based on micro-hydro power. The introduction of electricity into the villages had a significant impact on the women. Houses within the schemes were able to have four lights and almost always one was in the kitchen. Women were able to cut down on the cost and danger of kerosene lamps. The light also enabled them to carry out income generating activities such as mat weaving late into the night - a mixed blessing given their long hours of work. Often though the way the villages organised the distribution of electricity, and the management of the scheme, precluded poorer women and women-headed households from benefiting. They had no spare labour or cash to contribute. The other component of the energy programme was the distribution of fuel-saving wood stoves, made locally by potters. The stoves enabled women to reduce the amount of firewood they had to collect and saved cooking time. The time saved was the most important benefit. Unfortunately, in this programme too, the stoves failed to reach the poorest 20% of the households. The difficulty in energy programmes is to balance the need for sustainability of the technology production and distribution and the need for the technology to benefit the most disadvantaged - who, in Sri Lanka as elsewhere, are often women.

Since recently you have been working at IFRTD in London. Does this give you opportunities to work on gender? Is it a major concern of the organisation?

Transport is a sector in which women are almost totally invisible. This is despite the fact that women carry most of the transport burden of a rural household. The amount of human energy (time and physical effort) that goes into domestic transport activities such as fetching water and firewood, transport of subsistence field crops, and accessing health and education centres, goes completely unrecognised. Research in Africa has shown that women account for 65% of all household time spent in transport activities and between 66-84% of the energy. All of this activity is carried out on foot, with loads carried on the head or back. Women have less access than men to transport technologies that can alleviate this burden. Fewer women than men have access to carts or bicycles. This is a problem of affordability (women have less cash than men) and of lack of influence on household investment decisions. It is also a problem of social and cultural beliefs (women cannot work with oxen, or women should not ride bicycles) and of inappropriate design of the technology. Gender issues are one of my major concerns, and at IFRTD I have been trying to highlight these issues. I have initiated a Gender and Rural Transport programme that will generate case studies from Africa and Asia that demonstrate gender relations and their influence on the provision of, and access to, transport. It will also look at how transport and non-transport interventions (e.g. introduction of bicycles, or development of a water supply scheme) can impact on the situation. However, I am not sure that gender issues have been accepted as a major concern by the IFRTD network, yet.

What do you see as being the most important concerns as regards gender and energy?

The most important concern is the amount of human energy women expend, particularly rural women in developing countries. They have no labour saving devices for their domestic tasks. This is because “development projects” that attempt to tackle these issues, are now being forced to look at it from a (narrow) market perspective - what is the economic benefit to the women? When a company tries to sell me a car or a microwave oven in London they do not ask me what its income-generating potential will be. But when we want to distribute bicycle trailers or stoves to rural women we must first find out how they will earn an income from them. I think we need to begin to tackle the question of economic value.

Was there ever any particular event or experience that you have had, which made this really clear to you?

No, but I think I bump into what I consider are these double standards all the time.

What would you recommend to young women starting their careers in energy or transport planning?

I think that energy and transport areas have been male dominated for so long, that it is easy for women going into these areas to take on the same perspective and dismiss, as irrelevant or “unscientific” or “unprofessional”, the innate challenges to the system that they must feel from their own life experiences. It won't do them much good in their careers either if they take to challenging the status quo. So nothing changes. I would urge women starting their careers not to be overwhelmed and to take a critical look at the assumptions that dominate the thinking in their fields.

If you would like to know more about Pryanti's work, please contact:
Pryanti Fernando, Executive Secretary, IFRTD, 150 Southampton Row, London WC1 B5AL, UK; Tel. +44.171.2783670, Fax +44.171.2786880, Email ifrtd@gn.apc.org