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ENERGIA News Issue 3, July 1997

Vietnam Women's Union Promotes Solar Energy

Saskia Everts and Bob Schulte

The VWU Solar Energy project is a remarkable project in many ways. In our view, it is exceptional that women have been are trained in PV technology, and are successfully promoting, selling, installing, maintaining and using photovoltaic SHS.

Not only is the project completely implemented by women, it is also implemented on a commercial basis with full cost recovery. Although initial funds were made available by American donors, the users pay back the costs of the systems over a period of four years, thereby renewing the fund and enabling more households to purchase a SHS.

One of the reasons for this success is most probably the fact that VWU itself is a unique organisation. Where else in the world do you find a women's union with 11 million members out of a total population of 80 million? The VWU has an extensive and active network over the whole country and this is used to implement numerous development programs, all dedicated to women. The VWU is active in programs to improve knowledge and capacity of women, to support income generating activities, to improve health care, family planning and nutrition and to mobilise women to participate in creating new laws and policies.

Because of the experience of the VWU, it is an excellent partner for SELF. SELF, which designed the project, was mainly involved in providing the initial funds, importing the PV-SHSs and training. The role of VWU was to promote the systems in the rural areas through its extensive network and to collect the down-payments as soon as a family signed up. The systems were installed by Solarlab (South Vietnam) or Energy Institute (North Vietnam), assisted by local technicians, many of them women. The VWU again played an important role in collecting the monthly payments of the users. Trained members of the VWU travel every month to the remote villages to visit the individual households to do this.

Meeting women's needs?

It is interesting to take a closer look at the Vietnam solar energy project from a gender point of view, and use this example to discuss what ‘women and energy’ can mean.

When thinking of how to integrate women in an energy project, the first association that many people have is that more women should be involved in the project. The VWU project is a clear and successful example of such involvement by women. The women of the VWU are doing the marketing of the SHSs. They are evidently doing a good job; new households are constantly signing up for purchasing SHSs. Probably because the “saleswomen” of VWU know the energy needs of women best, they are very effective marketers.

But women and energy doesn't just mean involvement of women. The question can be raised whether the project is a successful gender and energy project or just a successful energy project implemented by women. Are the women and the VWU just being used for a difficult job (rural electrification)? Or are women themselves taking initiative and improving their own positions? What is the impact of this project on the relations between men and women in Vietnam? A fully successful gender and energy project not only employs women to achieve the goal of installing sustainable energy systems, but also accomplishes the improvement of the position of women. For example, it might lead to women engaging in new income generating activities (yielding finances that they can spend as they find necessary), or it would significantly reduce their workload. However, if solar home systems were, for example, bought by women, who would be responsible for paying back the loan, but only used by men on their hobbies, then the effects of the project on the gender situation could be negative rather than positive. What might look like a gender-sensitive project at first glance, might give a more negative impression if one carefully looks at the gender effects. To what extent does the Vietnam project run this risk?

Interestingly, in SELF's description (see the Box at the beginning of this article) and in other project documents from VWU, the word gender is not used. It was not a project objective to improve the position of women, at least this is not mentioned explicitly. In April 1997, SELF and VWU organised a one-day workshop. All the lectures were rather technical and there was no information on the impact of the project on the position of women in the rural areas of Vietnam. Apparently no detailed investigation into these effects had been carried out yet.

Still, superficial observations during TOOLConsult's visit to the project area do suggest that this project has a positive influence from a gender point of view.

First of all, although this has not been investigated in detail, the solar energy systems do seem to improve some of the women's living conditions: better light in the evenings can ease women's housework, electricity sometimes creates new opportunities for income generation, and television and radio provide better access to information and communication. So it seems that this project does address women's energy needs.

Secondly, one of the priority programs of the VWU is mobilising women to form lobby groups which can influence government policies and decisions. Mme. Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong, a member of the presidium of the VWU, has mentioned that one important impact of this solar energy project is that the VWU has shown their capability to implement energy projects. This can play a major role in the future when women are trying to get more influence in energy planning for Vietnam. Now that they have shown that they are able to implement rural electrification projects, they have suddenly become an important factor in the energy sector! This project brought the VWU into the energy sector, and it can use this position to influence future energy planning.

To conclude, the Vietnam Solar Energy project is unique in its successful involvement of women. It is also addressing women's energy needs by making available sustainable energy systems. This could very well benefit women and possibly strengthen their position. But because this latter question has not been systematically investigated, it is unfortunately not yet possible to conclude definitely that this project has improved the gender situation - at least not with the information available to us. An investigation of this is needed to show in which respects the project, as it is, improves the position of the women of Vietnam, and in which respects the gender dimension of the project could still be strengthened, making the project a fully successful gender and energy project.

The project description in the box is adapted from a profile made by Solar Electric Light Fund. The article is based on a visit that TOOLConsult, together with a SELF representative, made to Vietnam in order to investigate whether and how this successful pilot-project could be expanded in order to benefit many more rural households in Vietnam. In brief our conclusion was that the VWU has done a tremendous job in implementing the pilot project and that there are good opportunities for its future expansion. The authors are consultants working with TOOLConsult. For more information on the project, please contact:
SELF, 1734, 20th Street NW, Washington DC 20009, USA; Tel. +1.202.234.7265, Fax +1.202.328.9512, Email solarlight@self.org