Integrating Women in Energy Assistance: Which Way Forward?

Citation:

Skutsch, Margaret M. 1994. “Integrating Women in Energy Assistance: Which Way Forward?” Energy for Sustainable Development 1 (3): 49-51.

Author: Margaret M. Skutsch

Annotation:

Summary:
“Almost all the western donor agencies are very concerned with responding to ‘‘women’s needs’’ in the planning and implementation of development projects. Some donors have special units not only to organise women’s projects but increasingly also to make sure the needs of women are attended to in ‘‘mainstream’’ projects, for example by developing checklists against which to assess a project’s likely impact on women, or as an aide- memoire to planners to think about women’s interests when designing the project. All the DAC countries of the OECD have indeed agreed to prepare such instruments (OECD, 1990), which undoubted1y are useful in creating better working habits, and this is a good initiative. However, the existence and even the use of such guidelines will not seriously change the way development assistance works with regard to women if they are simply applied to the same types of development interventions that we have been using in the past. To really help women, it is necessary to rethink the types of projects supported, with a more basic understanding of what women need” (Skutsch 1994, 49-50).

Topics: Development, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Infrastructure, Energy

Year: 1994