Energy and Gender for Sustainable Development: A Toolkit and Resource Guide

2.3 How are Gender and Energy Related to Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals?

The United Nations has identified specific indicators to measure progress towards each of the Millennium Development Goals. For instance, the first goal – eradicating extreme poverty and hunger – sets a target of cutting in half, by 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 per day; achievement of that goal can be determined directly by measuring the proportion of people with incomes below $1 per day. The second goal – achieving universal primary education – can be measured by indicators like enrolment rates of boys and girls in primary schools and the proportion of students who remain in school through grade five.

Progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal of promoting gender equality and empowering women cannot be so clearly determined. Changes in gender relations and the quality of life for women are complex, socially varied, and subjective. Nevertheless, specific measurable indicators have been identified for that goal, including:

ratios of girls to boys in school,
ratios of literacy among men and women,
numbers of women employed outside the agricultural sector, and
proportion of seats in national parliaments held by women.

Table 2.2 outlines the connections between various MDG targets and gender/energy concerns.

Table 2.2
MDGs: Goals and Targets Related to Energy and Gender

Goal	Target	How energy contributes to achieving goals and targets	Gender perspective
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger	Target 1: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day	More efficient fuels and fuel-efficient technologies reduce the time and share of household income spent on domestic energy needs for cooking, lighting, and heating (poor people pay proportionately more for energy). (Reddy, 2000) Reliable and efficient energy can improve enterprise development. Lighting permits income- generating activities beyond daylight hours. Energy can be used to power labour-saving machinery and increase productivity of enterprises.	Women and girls are generally responsible for the provision of energy for household use, including gathering fuel or paying for energy for cooking, lighting, and heating. When women’s time and income is freed up from these activities, they can reallocate their time toward (1) tending to agricultural tasks and improving agricultural productivity and (2) developing micro-enterprises to build assets, increase income, and improve family well-being.
	Target 2: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger	Improved access to cooking fuels and energy-efficient technologies increases the availability of cooked foods (95% of staple foods need to be cooked before they can be eaten). Pumped water for drinking, cooking needs, and irrigation systems deliver more water than can be carried. Mechanical energy can be used to power labour-saving machinery and increase productivity along the food chain (for example, by processing agricultural outputs through milling and husking). Improved access to efficient fuel and technologies reduces post harvest losses and water needs through better preservation (for example, drying and smoking).	Women are generally responsible for cooking and feeding their families and often for subsistence agriculture and food processing. A well-developed agricultural sector helps to promote economic opportunities for women, allowing them to build assets, increase income, and improve family well-being.
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education	Target 3: Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling	Access to efficient fuels and technologies frees up the time of children, who are often pulled out of school to help with survival activities (fetching wood, collecting water, cooking inefficiently, crop processing by hand, manual farming work). Energy can create a child-friendly environment (through access to clean water, sanitation, lighting and space heating/cooling). Lighting in schools allows night classes.	Girls are more likely to be taken out of school to help with domestic and agricultural chores than boys. Spending on schooling, especially for girls, increases with higher incomes for women. Girls are more likely than boys to be affected by a lack of access to clean water and sanitation facilities, reducing school attendance.
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women	Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in education	Electricity enables access to educational information and information communications. Street lighting improves the safety of women and girls at night, allowing them to attend night schools and participate in community activities.	Women are more likely than men to be illiterate. Women are less likely than men to have access to information and be included in political and community life.
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality	Target 5: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five	Cleaner fuels and technologies help reduce indoor air pollution, which contributes to respiratory infections that account for up to 20% of the 11 million deaths in children each year. Traditional stoves can be unsafe (causing, for example, burns and household fires) Cooked food, boiled water, and space heating contribute to improved nutrition and health.	Women have primary care for the health of children. Women and young children spend the most time indoors. Women and girls are generally responsible for cooking, often with unventilated open fires.
Goal 5: Improve maternal health	Target 6: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio	Energy services can provide access to better medical facilities, including medicine refrigeration, equipment sterilisation, and operating theatres Energy can be used to produce and distribute information on sex education and contraceptives.	Excessive workload and heavy manual labour (for example, carrying heavy loads of fuelwood and water; arduous and repetitive agricultural and food processing tasks) may affect pregnant women’s health and well-being.
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability	Target 9: Reverse loss of environmental resources Target 10: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water	Over harvesting, land clearing, or environmental degradation can make fuelwood more scarce, forcing the poor to travel farther and spend more time and physical energy in search for fuel. Availability of cleaner fuels and energy-efficient equipment reduces demand for fuelwood and charcoal, increases availability of dung and agricultural wastes for fertiliser, and reduces air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Motorised pumps help provide more clean water for drinking and sanitation than can be carried by people or animals. ? Women and girls are generally responsible for gathering fuelwood and collecting water.	The chances of sexual assault and other risks (for example, of snake bites) increases the further women and girls must travel.
Source: Ines Havet, “Linking Women and Energy at the Local Level to Global Goals and Targets,” Energy for Sustainable Development VII (September 2003). Available online at http://www.ieiglobal.org/esd.html.

Further Reading

Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the Millennium Development Goals: A Handbook for Policy-Makers and Other Stakeholders, by Naila Kabeer (2003). Available online at http://web.idrc.ca/ev.php?URL_ID=33744&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC. This book brings together a diverse set of arguments, findings, and lessons from the development literature that help to explain why gender equality merits specific attention from policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders committed to the pursuit of pro-poor and human-centred development. It argues that improving women's access to economic opportunities and enhancing returns on their efforts, therefore, is central to achieving the goal of poverty eradication and the Millennium Development Goals.

"Common Ground: Women's Access to Natural Resources and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals,” Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO, 2004). Available online at http://www.wedo.org/sus_dev/common1.htm#top. This booklet published by the Women's Environment and Development Organisation explores women's access to and control of natural resources as a critical factor in sustainable development. Through case studies on women's access to water, energy, land, and biodiversity, the booklet shows strong linkages between the MDGs on poverty eradication, gender equality and environmental sustainability.