**4. The gender component of energy poverty**

The energy-poverty nexus has distinct gender characteristics. Of the approximately 1.3 bil‐ lion people living in poverty, it is estimated that 70% are women, many of whom live in fe‐ male-headed households in rural areas (Dutta, 1997). It is important to take note of this fact, not only because men and women have different energy needs and may have different ideas about sustainable livelihoods, but also because women and men have different access to re‐ sources and decision-making. Women's access to decision-making within the household and community is restricted, limiting their ability to influence processes and resource allocation on many issues including energy.

energy planning has been on fossil fuels to the exclusion of biomass fuels, even women's

Viewing Energy, Poverty and Sustainability in Developing Countries Through a Gender Lens

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51818

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If gender aspects of the energy-poverty nexus are to be adequately dealt with, it is clear that two major transformations have to take place. Firstly, women have to be empowered to make choices about energy. Enabling choice is linked to issues of sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation, including access to income generating activities. However, there is more at stake than just improvements in women's financial resources. Women should be able to act upon the energy choices open to them, and their scope for this type of action is linked to decision-making within households. Such a shift in decision -making requires

Secondly, it also requires changes on the energy supply-side. It will require responsiveness by the energy sector in the provision of equipment using modern energy forms that reduce

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002 recog‐ nized the important role of energy for reaching millennium development goals. Access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy is essential to sustainable development (Hasna, 2007). An adequate solving of energy problems will contribute to achieving progress across all pillars of sustainable development; social, economic and environmental and in meeting the UN millennium goals. Although there are no MDGs on access to energy, WSSD recog‐ nized that inadequate access to energy is both a cause and an effect of poverty and recom‐

"*Take joint actions and improve efforts to work together at all levels to improve access to reliable and affordable energy service for sustainable development sufficient to facilitate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, including the goal of halving the proportion of people in poverty by 2015, and as a means to generate other important services that mitigate poverty, bearing in mind that*

"Sustainable development" has been defined best by the Brundtland Commission as devel‐ opment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future gen‐ erations to meet their own needs (Hasna, 2007). Adequate and affordable energy supplies has been key to economic development and the transition from subsistence agricultural eco‐ nomics to modern industrial and service oriented societies. Energy is central to improved social and economic well being and is indispensable to most industrial and commercial wealth organization. It is the key for relieving poverty, improving human welfare and rais‐ ing living standards. But however essential it may be for development, energy is only a means to an end. The end is good health, high living standards, a sustainable economy and

the drudgery of much of women's labour, and that at affordable prices.

practical needs have hardly been addressed.

women's social and political empowerment.

**6. Energy and sustainable livelihoods**

*access to energy facilitates the eradication of poverty*".

a clean environment (Fatona, 2011).

mended the following:

Women spend more time than men on basic subsistence activities, such as gathering fuelwood, carrying water, and cooking. According to the World Bank (2001) women of all de‐ veloping countries spend between 2-9 hours a day collecting fuel and fodder, and performing cooking chores. The opportunity cost of these activities frequently prevents women from undertaking income-generating activities, which deprives poor families of much needed income. When rural women do engage in income-generating activities they are performed together with regular domestic work and are generally home-based microenterprise or piece rate projects (sewing, weaving, preparing food to sell, etc.) Home light‐ ing, agro-processing, drinking water pumping and more efficient stoves can reduce women's workloads, provide income earnings and improve women's health.

More than half of the world's household's cook with wood, animal waste, crop residues and untreated coal, exposing primarily women and children to indoor air pollution, which ac‐ cording to the World Health Organization, is responsible for the premature death of over 2 million women and children a year worldwide from respiratory infections. In rural India, shifting from fuel wood to cleaner sources of energy, like kerosene or LPG, halves the mor‐ tality rate of children under five (World Bank, 2001).

Gender issues have come to the forefront in many development sectors including agricul‐ ture, forestry and water but the energy sector has been slow to acknowledge the links be‐ tween gender equality, energy and development. Traditional energy policies have inadequately addressed the role of energy as an input to development and have largely ig‐ nored the critical role women play in energy systems, particularly in rural areas. Insufficient access to modern energy and existing patterns of energy use, processing, and collection af‐ fect women and men differently. Because of their socially determined gender roles, women and girls assume a higher proportion of the burden of unavailable energy services and inef‐ ficient energy use.
