This toolkit has been prepared in partnership with Energia with the financial support of the Swedish International Development Agency.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) mission is to help countries achieve sustainable human development by assisting their efforts to build their capacity to design and carry out development programmes in poverty eradication, employment creation and sustainable livelihoods, empowerment of women, and protection and regeneration of the environment, giving first priority to poverty eradication.  UNDP focuses on policy support and institution building in programme countries through its network of 136 country offices.

ENERGIA is an international network on gender and sustainable energy which links individuals and groups concerned with gender and energy in developing countries.  Founded in 1995, ENERGIA aims at strengthening their capacity to integrate gender into energy policy, planning and programmes for sustainable development.  ENERGIA currently consists of national networks in thirteen countries in Africa and nine countries in Asia.  ENERGIA also collaborates with other gender and energy networks in North and South America, Europe and Oceania.  For more information on ENERGIA, please visit www.energia.org. **

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) goal is to contribute to an environment supportive of poor people's own efforts to improve their quality of life.  Sida's development co-operation in the Energy sector aims at improving access to energy for the great part of the world's population that is today denied safe and efficient energy.  It shall also contribute to the development of well-functioning and sustainable energy systems.  For more information on Sida, please visit www.sida.se.

**  Energia Secretariat
     P.O. Box 64
    3830 AB Leudsen, the Netherlands
    Tel:  +31 (0) 33.4326067
    Fax: +31 (00 33.4940791
    E-mail: energia@etcnl.nl
   http://www.energia.org

FOREWORD

In 2005 the international community will gather to examine progress on gender and development issues in the ten years following the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. This event brought together representatives of government, civil society, media and grass roots organizations to look at the unique roles that men and women play in supporting development, economic growth and more equitable societies the world over. It had long been recognized, and was reaffirmed at the Beijing conference, that women face distinct challenges and opportunities in relation to the use and management of fuels and energy in household and economic activities. The document resulting from that event, the Beijing Platform for Action, makes specific recommendations concerning the need to address gender and energy linkages and the unique and often difficult situation faced by women in the poorest developing countries in particular. Since then other UN conferences including the Millennium Summit in 2000 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 have called for the empowerment of women including through increased economic opportunities and enhanced access to cleaner affordable fuels and energy technologies.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with ENERGIA is pleased to release this publication “Gender and Energy for Sustainable Development: A Toolkit and Resource Guide” which has been designed for use development practitioners, energy planners, community groups and gender experts on ways to address energy issues at the project and policy level. This publication builds on the ongoing analysis of UNDP, ENERGIA and a host of international and national experts. Its contents can be used to enhance energy projects, gender focused projects, or indeed development projects at large. We believe projects, programmes and policies that explicitly address the gender and energy nexus will result in better outcomes in terms of the sustainability of energy services as well as the human development opportunities available to women and men.

For many years energy projects were treated as gender neutral based on the assumption that energy bottlenecks and solutions impact men and women in similar ways. In most countries this does not reflect reality and has in fact led to “gender blind” projects which in some cases have not been successful due to the failure to look at the distinct situation of women and men in relation to energy production and use patterns.

The tools presented in this guidebook have been design to help development practitioners ask the relevant questions needed to bring about better development and energy outcomes that are gender specific and that address the needs of women in particular.

To accomplish this, an exclusive focus on “gender and energy” projects is not recommended. What we suggest instead is that all energy projects consider the differing role of men and women in relation to energy systems and that more broadly speaking, development efforts overall consider the role that energy can play in enabling or hindering successful outcomes.

The materials presented here have been peer reviewed and build on regional consultations, pilot projects and field research by gender and energy experts.We remain engaged in gender and energy analysis and programme support as part of UNDP’s overall commitment to gender mainstreaming and hope you will find this publication helpful in your own efforts in energy and development.

   Susan McDade
   Sustainable Energy Programme Manager
   Environment and Energy Group
   Bureau for Development Policy Gender Network.