Electricity access and gender equality: do we really understand the relationship between them?

Victoria Kasprowicz, David Ockwell, Elizabeth Mills, Rob Byrne

As a recent paper from the Energy Demand Research Centre called “Reframing how we talk about ‘energy poverty’” highlights, global organisations such as the United Nations and Sustainable Energy for All have long focused on improving energy access for people experiencing social marginalisation. However, the ways in which this work is discussed, and therefore understood, are important to reflect upon.

In 2015 the United Nations set a goal (SDG 7) to give everyone access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy by the year 2030 (UN Stats, 2023). Since 1998, despite recent setbacks associated with the COVID pandemic, the number of those living without electricity has dropped from 1.5 billion to under 750 million (International Energy Agency, 2024). This means that many countries in Asia and Latin America are close to giving everyone electricity. But, in Sub-Saharan Africa, efforts are still needed to reach around 600 million people without electricity access, especially in remote areas.

Such progress towards electricity access for all is, by and large, welcomed by those it reaches, as it offers meaningful opportunities for improvements in living standards. However, in line with Bouzarovski et al.’s (2025) critique of the mainstream energy poverty rhetoric that alienates or stigmatises people as ‘the energy poor’, our new paper, “Reconsidering the gender-energy nexus” critiques the way in which women are essentialised and victimised in many energy access efforts and debates.

We find that the relationship between electricity access and gender equality is complex and diverse. For instance, electricity can sometimes help make things more equal for women and girls, but other times can make things worse or support things continuing as they are. We explain how and why this happens, as well as provide an 8-step method to understand local gender dynamics and their interaction with the arrival of electricity. This is of relevance to policy makers and practitioners seeking to anticipate the gendered implications of different energy access initiatives in specific places, as well as to researchers seeking to analyse existing or planned interventions.

Our research looked at two very different places:

• Patriarchal communities in Northern Guatemala (Alta Verapaz and Petén), where men usually hold more power in families and communities.
• Matrilineal communities in Northern Colombia (La Guajira), where women often have more influence and family lines are passed through the mother’s side.

In Guatemala, we found that electricity made cooking easier and helped many women feel better about their daily work. However, it did not change gender roles for most women. Women still did nearly all the cooking and household work. Moreover, the arrival of electric lighting also meant women would get up earlier in the mornings to cook so the men could come home from the fields before the hottest times of the afternoons. This happened because there were few chances or strong reasons for men to get involved. In these areas, sticking to tradition is often seen as a way to survive.

In Colombia, we found that electricity helped many women earn money by weaving at night. Even some men began to join in. This is something new, since weaving is usually seen as women’s work. This change happened for several reasons. Gender roles were already more flexible in this area and, at the same time, many men were earning less money from traditional work like goat herding and farming, due to environmental pressures from climate change. Better roads and market access also made it easier to sell woven goods. All of this, combined with electricity, helped families share work in new ways, with important implications for gender equality.

But why is this the case? Combining insights from the Gender Studies literature with Social Practice Theory, our research shows that:

1. Gender is far more complex than simple categories like male or female can capture; gender is something people perform – or ‘do’ – through everyday activities like cooking, taking care of family, or earning money.
2. Electricity changes how people do these things, by using tools likes lightbulbs, phones, TVs, or machines.
3. Whether electricity enhances or undermines gender equity depends on what people use electricity for and how these activities are viewed in a specific culture.
4. Some activities are seen as mostly women’s or mostly men’s work, whilst other activities are shared. Gendered perceptions regarding who is responsible for undertaking particular activities can shift but depend on the other factors outlined here.
5. Gender equality improves when everyone – women, girls, men and boys – can choose what they want to do, without being held back by gender norms.
6. If electricity is only used for activities already seen as “women’s” or “men’s”, its arrival will not automatically shift how people think about who should do what. More change is needed than just bringing electricity.
7. For instance, if electricity arrives when nothing else in society is changing, people are less likely to see those activities in new ways.
8. But if electricity is used for shared activities, or if people begin to think differently about what men and women can do, then electricity can help make life fairer and give everyone more freedom.
9. Sometimes, electricity arrives during a time of change, like when new jobs appear (sometimes in conjunction with electrification programmes), or old jobs stop providing enough income. These moments create chances for people to question old ideas about who should do certain activities.
10. For instance, if electricity arrives when an activity such as farming – which is often done by men – is no longer earning enough money, women might use their own skills, like weaving or cooking, or new skills such as selling solar systems, to start a small business. This can give women more independence and help change how people see these activities and who is expected to earn money. As with any social change, however, the results are likely to be complex and nuanced. They are also likely to have different outcomes for different people. What might be empowering to one person, might therefore be the opposite to someone else.

Overall, we require a shift in the existing policy assumption that access to electricity is good for women. Instead, we need a more nuanced understanding that properly accounts for the ways in which electricity intersects with gendered power structures and static or changing structural factors, like road building or environmental change. Only once we fully appreciate these (which combining insights from Social Practice Theory and Gender Studies allows us to do) can we begin to properly understand the context-specific implications of electricity access for gender equality.