IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2013 - 53
Gender is not Homogenous
The introduction of small-scale
renewable energy systems to electrify rural communities also highlights a relatively recent problem of
who owns the technology. A review
of a biogas program in Nepal found
a massive gap in biogas plant ownership, by gender, caste, and class.
While only 17.2% of the biogas systems were owned by women, this
was distributed unevenly among
castes and ethnic minorities. The
gap in ownership was found to be
26.25 percentage points in favor
of those belonging to the Brahmin
upper caste and -7.42 percentage
points against those belonging to the
lower caste Terai communities. This
also illustrates the fact that women
are not a homogenous grouping
and that gender is also mediated by
class, caste, ethnicity, and race. A
key recommendation of the review
is revealing: the need to promote
the technology as a "social product"
in order to address the gender and
social equity gaps in ownership [15].
of the sectors that they dominate."
As for the gender implications, the
report finds that "from 2000-2008,
less than 1% of the [World] Bank's
investments were for cooking and
biomass energy, both in Africa and
on the global level." The report recommendations are to "massively
scale up financial and policy support for decentralized water and
energy projects" [16, pp.11-17]. An
ActionAid study supports similar
findings in the case of India. The
study identifies pico, micro, and
small hydropower, solar and wind
hybrid systems, and solar home
systems, biogas for household-scale
digesters and small-scale biomass
gasifiers, as particularly appropriate for off-grid rural areas [17].
Leaping Over Stages
Some predict that developing countries can leap over development
"stages" by using smaller and less
capital-intensive renewable energy
systems. According to Chow, "In the
same way that the developing world
Small-scale, off-grid, renewable
energy systems can be the most
appropriate, convenient, and
economically viable option to
generate power and provide energy
to remote rural communities.
Small Or Large-Scale
Solutions?
Services for the Poor
Some studies show that smallscale infrastructure projects, such
as decentralized renewable energy
distribution systems and technologies, are more conducive to
improving access to services by the
poor, compared to large-scale conventional energy projects. These
findings have gender implications
in relation to poor women's access
to energy services.
A study by International Rivers, with a focus on the World
Bank's track record of infrastructure projects in Africa, finds that:
"Big infrastructure projects tend
to prioritize the demands of industrial consumers and urban centers
over the basic needs of the poor. At
the same time, they have often had
serious social and environmental
impacts, and have weakened the
flexibility and climate resilience
with large-scale infrastructure projects, small-scale systems are more
open to transparency and accountability mechanisms and processes,
and are therefore less prone to corruption [18]. This view is also supported by the International Rivers
study which finds that large infrastructures projects "can entrench
the power of vested interests, and
encourage corruption rather than
democratic control" [19, p. 17].
Democratic Control
Others argue that small-scale systems are more enabling for "bottomup" participatory approaches, thus
providing greater opportunities for
participation by poor women and
other marginalized groups. According to Roberto Verzola, "Highly
centralized energy systems dynamically interact in mutually supportive ways with highly centralized
economic and political systems.
Those who control such highly
centralized systems enjoy disproportionate economic and political
power, even under societies that
are nominally democratic... Smallscale decentralized energy systems,
on the other hand, are more consistent with the ideals, principles and
practices of democracy." Given the
problems of corruption associated
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
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FALL 2013
is bypassing the paired-copper-wire
grid that characterizes telephony in
the developed world and is leaping
directly to cellular communication,
so too is it likely to rely much less
heavily on our technological model
of electricity generation. Rather
than adopting a system with large
central-station power plants generating electricity and distributing it
over long distances, we speculate
that the developing countries, especially the poorest, are more likely
to eventually adopt smaller and
less capital-intensive microturbines
and renewable sources of electricity
generation such as biomass, wind,
and solar that are closer to the point
of use. These applications will bring
with them their own sets of problems, but will enable the developing
world to avoid others" [20, p. 1530].
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