Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development

Voices from Feminist Political Ecology

Bernadette Resurrección, Rebecca Elmhirst, Bernadette P. Resurrección, Rebecca Elmhirst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351175166
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book casts a light on the daily struggles and achievements of 'gender experts' working in environment and development organisations, where they are charged with advancing gender equality and social equity and aligning this with visions of sustainable development.

Developed through a series of conversations convened by the book's editors with leading practitioners from research, advocacy and donor organisations, this text explores the ways gender professionals – specialists and experts, researchers, organizational focal points – deal with personal, power-laden realities associated with navigating gender in everyday practice. In turn, wider questions of epistemology and hierarchies of situated knowledges are examined, where gender analysis is brought into fields defined as largely techno-scientific, positivist and managerialist. Drawing on insights from feminist political ecology and feminist science, technology and society studies, the authors and their collaborators reveal and reflect upon strategies that serve to mute epistemological boundaries and enable small changes to be carved out that on occasions open up promising and alternative pathways for an equitable future.

This book will be of great relevance to scholars and practitioners with an interest in environment and development, science and technology, and gender and women's studies more broadly.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351175180, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Part 1

The politics of identity and boundary marking

1 Strategic reflexivity in linking gender equality with sustainable energy

An engineer in the gender profession

By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección In conversation with Joy Clancy

Recent debates about climate change have prompted a renewed emphasis on the relationship between energy and development, moving discussion away from preoccupation with energy resource scarcity and bringing instead a focus on pathways to transition to low carbon alternatives (Leach et al., 2010). At the same time, there has been a growing recognition that far from being simply a technological and economic phenomenon, energy is social in its organisation, assembled at scales from individual to planetary (Miller et al., 2015). Questions about gender inequality – in terms of access to energy and the power to engage in energy decision-making at different scales – are long-standing in development contexts as they are in the realms of agriculture, forestry and water (Cecelski, 1995). The mission of the gender expert is to address energy security and energy justice from a feminist perspective. However, the role of gender expertise in the context of energy systems brings with it its specific challenges that relate to its embeddedness in the design and operation of technological systems, and in particular, in engineering: a field which has historically lacked gender diversity and which workplace sociologies have identified as being heavily masculinised across almost all contexts (Pearl-Martinez and Stephens 2016).

In this chapter, we focus on the voice and experience of energy engineer Joy Clancy, a leading advocate in the area of energy and gender, particularly through her role as a founder-member of ENERGIA: the International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy (ENERGIA, 2015). We consider her reflections and insights through the lens of recent feminist work in science, technology and society (Jasanoff, 2004; Haraway, 1988) and the sociology of expertise (Azocar and Marx-Ferree 2016) to explore obstacles and opportunities for addressing vital gender concerns in energy policy, institutions and technologies. The chapter is organised around three points of focus that emerged in our conversations: (i) how expertise is produced and made effective via a personal feminist politics and a professional identity as an engineer; (ii) strategic reflexivity in connecting engineering science and gender analysis in order to enhance the sustainable development, delivery and use of energy; and (iii) a reflection on pragmatism in a context where the performativity of numbers and ‘equality as efficiency’ arguments are used to construct a common language between different actors in the gender–energy–development policy nexus. We begin with a brief overview of the context of energy, gender and development, how this field emerged from the energy crises of the 1970s, and the renewed impetus around gender concerns that have gathered in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals and international strategies to address climate change through a transition to low carbon energy provision.

An evolving field: gender issues in energy systems

The context for Joy Clancy’s work on gender and energy began during a period marked by crises in energy supply: the geopolitical dynamics of access to oil reserves for countries of the global North, and fuelwood shortages in the global South. Her professional pathway, which she discusses in the next section, began with a focus on small-scale alternative technologies directed towards resolving the need for fuelwood, but has gone on to reflect what Danielsen (2012) characterises as a series of phases of gender, energy and development, including: (i) the crisis in biomass degradation that affected women’s fuelwood collection and cooking (1970s to 1980s); (ii) concerns over the health and workload burdens associated with fuelwood or biomass-based household energy use (1980s to 1990s); (iii) energy poverty in the context of livelihoods and gendered rights to the assets required to access energy services (1990s to early 2000s); and (iv) energy futures, renewables and climate change with new technologies, new forms of organisation of supply and liberalised energy markets (2000s) (Clancy 2016).

In the poorest developing countries in Africa and Asia, as much as 90 per cent of total energy consumption has been attributed to households and consisted of traditional biomass fuels mostly managed and collected by rural women, and this prompted a focus on women’s roles and energy use within the household as an entry point for ‘gender and energy’ (Cecelski & Dutta, 2011). Subsequently, the emphasis for development policy and practice shifted towards examining health and wellbeing impacts for women and children: many of the biomass stoves traditionally used have been identified as a key source of indoor air pollution, while collection of biomass also caused health problems and placed women in circumstances where they were subject to physical and sexual abuse (Clancy et al., 2002). By focusing on the reproductive role and labour of women as users of energy for household food provision, researchers revealed that without access to modern energy services, women and girls spend most of their day performing basic subsistence and caring obligations, including the physically draining task of collecting biomass fuels. Findings such as these established a gender research niche within energy and development studies directed towards improved cook stove development, design, and likely adoption by women (Kelkar & Nathan, 2005), and on the diffusion of alternative technologies among rural households. This was Joy’s entry point into this field.

Chiming with an emphasis in gender and development research and practice on gender as relational (Rathgeber, 1990), work has gone on to show how access to energy is determined by intra-household decision-making and by the undervaluing of women’s labour and their low opportunity costs, as well as women’s relative social position (Lambrou & Piana, 2006; Cecelski & CRGGE, 2006; Cecelski, 2004). Although the number of people without access to electricity has fallen in recent years, gendered energy poverty remains, with variability in the quality and affordability of energy supply and grid connection. This is attributed to the ways that other aspects of gender inequality intersect with energy access: around women’s low levels of property ownership, access to bank accounts, low incomes and lack of official documentation that lead to gendered exclusions. The wider significance of such exclusions for development and for women’s economic and political empowerment were identified as gender and energy researchers demonstrated the importance of other forms of energy access for women, such as process heat for small-scale income generation (de Groot et al., 2017) and mechanical energy to reduce drudgery of water collection, food processing and laundry (Kooijman et al., 2018).

Joy acknowledges that the energy sector has lagged behind others (e.g. agriculture, health) in terms of engaging with the gender agenda. Her work with ENERGIA has persistently pushed for gender issues to be raised, and in recent years this has gained greater traction as the recent United Nations (UN) Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals have drawn attention to gender and energy linkages. The development of alternative energy sources and the creation of carbon markets to mitigate climate change and reduce fossil fuel dependency (Rojas et al., 2014; Gay-Antaki, 2016; Nelson & Kuriakose, 2017) requires broader attention to gender within energy systems and throughout the supply chain, and a recalibration of the balance between technical (engineering), economic (pricing and cost–benefit analysis) and social domains to reflect how social, economic and political dynamics are linked to the design and operation of technological systems (Jasanoff, 2004). As Joy puts it, energy transition is not solely about the source of energy or a shift away from fossil fuels. Other transformations are also apparent, as energy infrastructures for production and storage are scaled down and decentralised within renewable energy systems. This provides a new entry point for gender concerns as social considerations are elevated around whose preferences are implemented into policy (Miller et al., 2015).

In the remainder of this chapter, we discuss Joy’s experience and reflections about energy studies, the dominance of engineering and technical fields and the place of ‘gender expertise’ amidst this. We consider Joy’s approach towards persuading the unconvinced coupled with her desire to build an evidence base for policy, and the pragmatics of ‘efficiency’ and ‘numbers’ as credible frames and forms of knowledge within gender and energy work.

Engineering expertise and feminist politics

In our conversations with Joy, we were interested in exploring her personal biography, from starting out as a chemist to becoming a leading energy and gender proponent, and the difference her technical background has made in the kinds of collaborative work that she has gone on to do. Joy’s work involves bridging between the technical and social (gender) dimensions of energy systems, and her story is one in which ‘gender expertise’ is made effective via her professional identity as a trained engineer. Joy notes that her entry into chemistry as an undergraduate in the late 1960s was somewhat accidental and perhaps a reflection of early efforts to encourage more participation of women in a male dominated field. Her interest in energy began at Reading University in 1980, where she was doing a PhD and looking for an area of research to focus on: at this point she began her work on small-scale (appropriate) technologies and alternative energy systems, looking at replacing wood fuel with biogas to power cookstoves in the global South. This work was linked to the E.F. Schumacher inspired Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) (which was renamed Practical Action in 2005) (Practical Action, n.d.). The framing of the problem was technical, rather than social, the expertise required was the design and engineering of an appropriate technology. Having not started out as a ‘gender professional’ and with no academic background in social science, Joy’s interest came more from trying to make sense of the responses of ‘beneficiaries’ to the appropriate energy technologies being offered to them.

Joy: I did technology. That was it. But in my personal life, I was, of course, very radical as a feminist! They were two separate parallel worlds and it took quite some time for me to wake up and think, ‘Oh, dear. Those ladies carrying the fuelwood are not taking up my nice biogas system for a lot of complicated reasons that your feminism should have enabled you to see!’

The context of engineering is important for understanding gender and ‘expertise’. As Miller et al. (2015) note, the dominant approach to energy systems has been influenced by technical knowledge and capacities rooted in the professional field of engineering. Historically, engineering design was a process of trial and error – the word engineer is derived from the Latin ingeniator, meaning someone who is ingenious – but since its professionalisation in the 19^th century, it has shifted towards being a white collar mathematics and science-based field of endeavour (Mills et al. 2014). Much has been made of the gender inequalities inherent in the engineering profession more broadly, which are related to the field’s hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2016): an area of expertise occupied by men’s bodies and masculine practices which normalises male advantage (Faulkner, 2009a; 2009b; Kronsell, 2011; Liebrand, 2014). For women working in a male-dominated profession, this can mean both their subtle exclusion and their hyper-visibility, with women engineers adopting strategies to be one of the men and fit in, or to benefit from standing out as a woman (Ettinger et al., 2019). However, having legitimated expertise (i.e. professional qualification) in engineering offers advantages: sociologists note how credentialist ideologies connect specific forms of expertise to claims of authority and professional boundary marking (Saks, 2012). This is something that Joy concurs with: she finds that having a technical background in science and engineering means that technical people will listen to her, she can establish common ground and ‘fit in’. Once she tells a technical audience that she has a PhD in engineering, she can feel that people in the room begin to relax because they feel that ‘here’s a person who understands me’.

Joy: When I was offered the professorial chair in the university, the Dean wanted the title to be ‘professor in gender and energy’ and I said no, I want it as ‘energy and gender’ because if I put it the other way around, the majority of technical people will switch off. And it’s a much better, stronger way of engaging with people and getting people to listen to what I want them to hear. Whereas if I put it the other way around, all the converted like the Babettes and Beckys will listen, but you don’t get the sceptics to be convinced to listen to you.

Outside the University, some of the organisations with which Joy now works (for example, Africa Biogas, HiVOS (People Unlimited) and SNV (Netherlands Development Cooperation) are heavily dominated by male engineers. She believes that her technical background enables her to mix more easily in these circles, giving her a way in for introducing the role of women and/or gender in energy advocacy and research.

Joy: I’m really quite pragmatic in the sense of not profiling myself too much as a gender expert because in some ways it becomes a barrier since there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what gender is about. Many think it’s all about counting women. A lot of gender mainstreaming merely invo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Troubling gender expertise in environment and development: Voices from feminist political ecology
• PART 1 The politics of identity and boundary marking
• PART 2 The politics of knowledge in environment and development realms
• PART 3 The power of gender champions
• Afterword: Gender expertise, environmental crisis and the ethos of care
• Index