3.3   Indicators Incorporating Gender and Energy Sensitivity

Identification of appropriate gender-sensitive indicators for particular energy projects will depend on an analysis of existing conditions within the target area and an understanding of the differing roles of men and women within that specific culture. Community participation, involving input from both men and women, is critical for establishing project objectives and indicators of success that directly address the perceived needs and goals of the participants and target beneficiaries. When women and women’s groups involved with projects define their own indicators for effective participation and sharing in project benefits, those indicators will provide context-specific data relevant to project monitoring and evaluation.

Measuring Impacts of Projects on Men and Women

Indicators are generally used to measure progress towards the development objectives of a project. In addition, clear and concrete targets help in the formulation of more effective projects. The current emphasis on measurable results is meant to improve the outcomes of development efforts and investments by helping to shape and inform the planning, design, and management of projects. Unless gender considerations are included throughout the design and planning process, and specifically included in the project objectives, they are not likely to be carefully tracked in the monitoring and evaluation of the project’s success.

Collection of separate data on men and women ideally should be done at the beginning of the project cycle (at the conceptualisation stage, discussed above), starting with a gender-differentiated baseline assessments of existing conditions. Then it will be easier to determine whether there are differing impacts on men and women throughout the project implementation period. Looking at “households” as a category, for example, without differentiating between the separate needs and concerns of the men and women in the household, or between male- and female-headed households, can result in misleading data both about baselines and about project impacts.

Quantitative indicators measure changes over time that can be presented in terms of numbers, percentages, or ratios, such as the number of women holding seats in parliament or the number of girls in school. Quantitative indicators are useful because they are relatively easy to track.

Qualitative indicators, such as changes in opinions and attitudes over time due to project activities, are more difficult to obtain and measure since they may require interviews with participants or surveys of target beneficiaries. Collection of this sort of information, however, can provide important perspectives on the actual effectiveness of a project concerned with an abstract goal, such as gender empowerment, and on why measurable changes occurred. Qualitative analysis might, for example, indicate what sorts of obstacles keep women from occupying more seats in parliament or other decision-making positions.

What is measured often reflects the interests of those who are doing the measurement. A rural energy project might be evaluated in terms of numbers of solar panels installed, or households with improved stoves, or micro-hydro generators installed. Those numbers would be fairly easy to produce and would show the results, over time, that are directly attributable to the project. From the perspective of an engineer, or government energy agency, the view might be “the more equipment in use, the more successful the project.” Gender-disaggregated data might show how many men, compared to women, were beneficiaries of the project, but that information might not be of much interest to someone evaluating the project unless gender concerns are somehow linked to the objectives of the project.

If the people or institutions conducting a project assessment are not comfortable with strategies for measuring social impacts or applying a gender analysis, they are less likely to gather or value this sort of data. By placing specific emphasis on gender equality and empowerment of women, as well as poverty alleviation, the Millennium Development Goals help to focus attention on the need for understanding differences in the status of men and women and for measuring changes in gender roles.

Project Level Indicators Linked to the Millennium Development Goals

Since the MDGs are meant to set overall international priorities for sustainable development activities, and to ensure that poor people are included in the benefits of development, it is useful to consider developing project-level indicators linked to those targets. In line with the Millennium Development Goals, some general performance indicators for energy-related projects might include the following factors.

Goal 1: Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger

• Number of poor households that are project beneficiaries. Number headed by men/women.
• Income-producing opportunities associated with the equipment. Used by men/women.
• Actual income increases due to project. For men/women.
• Financing available for acquiring the equipment. Used by men/women.

Goal 2: Achieving universal primary education

• Effects of project on primary school enrolment, attendance, and performance. For boys/girls.

Goal 3: Promoting gender equality and empowering women

• Increase in non-agricultural employment and incomes of women.
• Overall increase in women’s income.
• Effect of project on time spent by women in household activities.
• Effect of project on total daily workload of women.
• Ownership of productive equipment by women.
• Increases in decision-making power of women in household, community, government.
• Literacy and skills training for women/men.

Goals 4, 5 and 6: Improving health

• Reduction in indoor air pollution.
• Improvements in health clinic facilities and services.
• Changes in the number of visits to health clinics.

Goal 7: Ensuring environmental sustainability

• Increased access to clean water/pumped water.
• Impact of project on sanitation. Forest land preserved.
• Reclamation of eroded agricultural land.

These factors will not all be addressed by any particular energy development project. Nevertheless, seriously considering these as possible indicators would lead to the formulation of projects that are geared towards measuring results in terms of gender equality and poverty alleviation. It will also help to make explicit which gender goals are being addressed. The relative importance of these sorts of indicators will vary in different communities, as will the particular constraints and opportunities relating to poverty, gender, and development, so it is important that the people – both men and women – who are expected to benefit from any energy development project be engaged in consideration of these as possible indicators and selection of those most relevant in their particular context.

Indicators Developed in Connection with the Multifunctional Platform Initiative 7

One of the most successful projects selected for analysis in the UNDP Energy and Women Project’s book Generating Opportunities: Case Studies on Energy and Women was the Multifunctional Platform project, initiated in Mali, which introduced diesel engines mounted on platforms to provide off-grid energy for rural villages. The engines can be hooked up to equipment to provide a variety of services, including grinding, milling, husking, pumping water, charging batteries, running lights, and powering tools such as welders and saws. By providing a cheap and simple source of energy for rural enterprises, the platforms have improved the quality of people’s lives in rural areas and created new income-generating opportunities for both men and women.

Although developed as a poverty reduction strategy, the Multifunctional Platform Project has also become a major vehicle for gender equality and empowerment. In Mali, as in many other developing countries, rural women generally have to use their own physical energy to collect firewood, transport water, and process food, engaging in physically arduous, time-consuming repetitive tasks. Poor rural women are very much in need of substitutes for the use of their own energy and power sources that will allow them to generate income from their labour. The Multifunctional Platform Project is set up so that within interested villages it is women’s associations that control and manage the equipment.

Goal 3: Promoting gender equality and empowering women

• Girls more able to attend school, perform better, and stay in school longer because the platform is used most for work that would otherwise done by girls.
• Increased income for women leads to greater spending on children, particularly girls’ education.
• Women managing the platform acquire literacy skills, greater decision-making responsibilities, and awareness of higher educational and occupational options.

Goal 7: Ensuring environmental sustainability

• Pumping functions of the platform engine provide clean water for drinking and sanitation, and free women from arduous and time-consuming work carrying and processing water
  

Measuring Actual Impacts of the Multifunctional Platform 8

As part of an assessment intended to provide substantive input regarding expansion of the platform project into other countries, a comprehensive study of the impacts of the platform was undertaken in Mali in 2001. With more than 300 platforms in operation in villages in Mali, substantial information about their performance and impacts was obtained through surveys and field visits. Some of the key findings are outlined below.

Reduced time and labour required for household chores
Women in villages where platforms have been installed cite time savings as one of the most important results of having access to motorised power. For example, milling and husking of cereal grains, primary food staples in rural villages, is traditionally done by women and girls using pestles and mortars or grinding stones. Over a week’s time, mechanical milling of maize, millet, and sorghum can save women the equivalent of an eight-hour day. Manual husking of 28 kilos of rice would require two nights of soaking, then drying, and then eight hours of manual husking. With the platform engine, the husking operation can be mechanised and done in less than an hour. With the grinding attachment, the platform engine can grind seven kilos of peanuts in ten minutes, work that would otherwise take a whole day without resulting in as finely processed peanut butter.

Increased income generation
Concrete measurements of time and labour saved give a very real flavour to discussions about relieving poverty and empowering women. The same sorts of measurable indicators can be applied to impacts on women’s enterprises, such as shea butter extraction, which is a common income-producing activity. The butter can be used for soap, creams, cosmetics, and chocolate manufacturing. The traditional process for producing shea butter from shea nuts involves grinding, roasting, milling, kneading, washing, boiling, and clarifying. Using the platform engine for the grinding and milling operations saves the producers almost four hours over the traditional pounding and crushing. In addition, more butter can be extracted from the nuts, and the quality of the butter is better, so there is more volume as well as value for the product.

Expanded food production for sale and household consumption
Time saved due to the availability of the platform allowed women to spend more time maintaining their individual farms, to increase and diversify their farm production, and to develop small trading operations in agricultural and fish products and prepared condiments. For example, in the Sikasso and Bougouni regions of Mali, the increase in planted areas on individual farms has allowed women to double or triple their rice production, thereby improving household food security.

Indicators used to measure increased agricultural production and trading activities include:

• Increased number of market visits by women to neighbouring villages per week. Such visits increased from 1-2 per week to 5-6 per week; women reported that because of the platform their domestic work was reduced and their income-generating activities increased.
• Increased numbers of bus stops to serve higher volume of passengers traveling to weekly markets.
• Increase in quantities of rice sold at markets, where customers prefer rice which is mechanically husked.

Increased education levels for girls
Teachers in villages served by multifunctional platforms reported the following factors related to improvements in girl’s school performance:

• Fewer delays in arriving at school due to relief from early morning duties such as pounding grains and drawing water.
• More regular attendance because mothers kept them home less to help with domestic chores.
• Girls less tired when they arrived at school.
• More time for lessons and homework.
• Women’s increased revenues allowed them to spend more on children’s education and school supplies.

In order to confirm the impacts of the platforms as important factors, the assessment also involved surveys of several villages, undertaking a comparative analysis of boys’ and girls’ school performances for two years before and after the introduction of the platform’s services. Performance indicators included numbers of boys and girls passing to a higher class and comparisons of average scores on evaluation tests.

Adult literacy and training of women
In each village, twenty women designated by the women’s association receive professional and adult literacy training to enable them to function as part of the management committee for the platform project. Literacy, technical skills, and accounting proficiency are required to manage the operation of the equipment and payments for the energy services provided.

Increased participation of women in public life
Because the Multifunctional Platform Project requires that the platforms be requested, acquired, and managed by village women’s committees, women are necessarily engaged in decision-making processes for the community and in operating equipment which provides essential services for the entire community. Women elders are put forward to negotiate with village councils concerning the establishment of the platforms, to manage conflicts, and to oversee use of the resources generated by the platform. Other women receive technical training to operate the platforms, which gives them important roles in daily village life. In addition, revenues from the platform operations become important sources of capital for village development.

The Multifunctional Platform Project is an example of how integrating a focus on women’s needs and women’s empowerment into the objectives of an energy-related poverty reduction strategy can provide a concrete pathway towards reaching the key goals and targets set out in the Millennium Development Declaration. Other types of rural development projects combining activities that provide greater access to energy services with improved food production, education, income generation, and health facilities – for women and men – can also serve as vehicles for achieving the targets established in connection with the Millennium Development Goals.

Further Reading

Guide to Gender Sensitive Indicators, Canadian International Development Agency (1997). Available online at http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida_ind.nsf/0/7B5DA002FEAEC07C8525695D0074A824?OpenDocument. The Guide to Gender-Sensitive Indicators and the related Project-Level Handbook are the final products of a 14-month project researched and compiled by Dr. Tony Beck and Dr. Morton Stelcner with the Division for Women in Development and Gender Equity in CIDA's Policy Branch. The Guide explains why gender-sensitive indicators are useful tools for measuring the results of development initiatives. It concentrates in particular on projects with an end-user focus and shows how gender-sensitive indicators can and should be used in both gender-integrated and women-in-development-specific projects, and in combination with other evaluation techniques.

“Rural Electrification in South Africa: Implications for the Health and Quality of Life of Women,” by Angela Mathee and Thea de Witt, in ENERGIA News 4, Issue 4 (December 2001). Available online at http://www.energia.org/resources/newsletter/enarchive.html.
The potential benefits of South Africa’s rural electrification programme are wide-ranging and have important impacts on women, including reduction in exposure to indoor and ambient air pollution, enhanced health, saving of time, and improved safety, leading to an overall improvement in the quality of life.

Monitoring and Evaluation in Rural Electrification Projects: A Demand-Oriented Approach (Washington, D.C.: Winrock International, The World Bank, and The Mallika Consultants, 2003). Available online at http://www.worldbank.org/astae/enpogen. The goal was to develop a demand-oriented methodology to monitor and evaluate rural electrification projects and measure socio-economic impacts, with a focus on poverty and gender implications. The result was a research strategy and two different but complementary methodologies useful for rural electrification project design, implementation, and evaluation.

7.  UNDP and UNIDO, Energy for Poverty Reduction: The Multifunctional Platform Initiative (2001).

8.  Moussa Diagana, Impact Study of the Multifunctional Platform on the Living Conditions of Women (2001); available online at www.ptfm.net/diaganareport.pdf.