Creating Opportunities for Women in the Renewable Energy Sector: Findings from India

ABSTRACT

This paper identifies opportunities and constraints that low-income women face in accessing livelihoods in the renewable-energy sector in India through qualitative and quantitative research conducted in collaboration with The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) and the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in 2012–13. Whereas previous research has focused on women mostly as end users of solar and biomass technologies, this research attempts also to understand women's potential as entrepreneurs, facilitators, designers, and innovators. Findings reveal that although access to technology and employment in the energy sector is limited by inadequate purchasing power and low social status, there is tremendous potential to create livelihoods for women at all levels of the energy supply chain. Broader findings indicate that women can gain optimal traction from employment in the energy sector only if there are wider socially progressive policies in place, including state intervention to create a robust social welfare infrastructure and accessible, high-quality, public services.

KEYWORDS:

• Women's labor force participation
• employment
• poverty
• renewable energy
• solar energy
• biomass

JEL Codes:

• A1
• B54

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Financial support from Western University and the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute's Action Research Project Grant enabled the completion of this research project.

Notes

1 I use the terms “green” and “low-carbon” economy interchangeably in this paper. There is a lot of debate and contradiction about the definition of these terms. For the purposes of this paper, I define a green economy as one that produces lower greenhouse gas emissions, uses resources more efficiently, and generates income and jobs while paying attention to social equity and inclusiveness.

2 The concept of carbon trading has been met with strong opposition from critics who are concerned that far from reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it simply advances the commercialization of the atmosphere and the creation of new sources of accumulation and speculation for finance capital (Edgardo Lander 2011). In a similar vein, Pio Verzola, Jr. and Paul Quintos (2011) call them at best questionable since they do not truly reduce global GHG emissions, but only pass the responsibility to mitigate from one entity to another. I consider these criticisms valid and well justified, but I cannot simultaneously ignore the practical logic of enabling a member-based organization of poor self-employed women to benefit financially from their efforts to reduce GHG emissions.

3 Jayshree Vyas is Managing Director of SEWA Bank.

4 Rajendra Pachauri is Director-General of TERI and Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

5 Abhishek Kar is a research fellow at TERI.

6 Mini Govindan is a research fellow at TERI.

7 Sarah Alexander is a consultant with SELCO Solar.

8 Harish Hande is the founder of SELCO Solar. Ibrahim Rehman is Director of the Social Transformation Division of TERI.

9 A 2009 PBS documentary captured part of a street play in which a woman points out to her husband that he has moved into the twenty-first century with his acquisition of a TV and cellphone, while she continues to remain in the eighteenth century with her use of a traditional mud stove in the kitchen. She proceeds to inform him that purchasing an improved cookstove would provide economic, health, and environmental benefits for the entire family. The documentary can be viewed online at http://www.projectsurya.org/.

10 I attended a clean energy exhibition in New Delhi in 2013. There were hundreds of applications of solar energy (for lighting and other purposes) on display, but there were fewer than ten models of cookstoves.