Gender and Energy Poverty in Africa: An Intersectional Approach

Gender inequality is mutually constructed with other forms of social differences in terms of ethnicity, race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, age as well as other axes of social power and oppression. These factors tend to accentuate the gender energy gap, while energy access remains an important tool to improve women’s livelihoods. The chapter thus adopts an intersectional approach to the gender-energy poverty nexus across 20 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period from 2010 to 2015, using the Demographic Health Surveys. This approach disentangles the mechanisms of multiple discriminations that arise at the same time and are particularly relevant in explaining the gender energy disparity. The study extends the framework of Crenshaw (Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity, politics, and violence against women of colour. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299, 1991) and Großmann and Kahlheber (Energy poverty in an intersectional perspective: On multiple deprivation, discriminatory systems, and the effects of policies. In Energy poverty and vulnerability (pp. 12–32). Routledge, 2017), and group the different axes of inequality into micro-, meso-and macro-level dynamism that influence the gender-energy poverty link. The findings indicate that African women with low education levels, living in poverty and those having difficult access to health and transport services, tend to be energy poor. Similarly, those women who spend more time in unpaid care and domestic work and those victims of intimate partner violence are more likely to be energy deprived.