The political economy of gender mainstreaming in energy access in Senegal

Abstract

Abstract In June 2017, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) adopted the Policy for Gender Mainstreaming in Energy Access to integrate gender equity in West Africa’s energy and climate policy making. The policy represents the first regional gender and energy policy in the world, establishing a framework to enhance understanding at the nexus of gender and energy, improve the inclusivity of policies, programs, and initiatives, and increase women’s participation in the field of energy in the public and private sectors. Each member state developed a National Action Plan to operationalize these goals and align implementation with national contexts and policy priorities. This study examines the experience of Senegal’s National Action Plan development, from 13 semi-structured interviews of key stakeholders and document review. We use the Actor, Objective, Context political economy framework to understand how Senegal’s economic and political structures, historical and social context, and influence of key stakeholders shaped their efforts to mainstream gender in the country’s energy sector. We then describe four main objectives of actors in government, civil society, and the development space involved in policy development, summarizing these as: electricity access, economic development, access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking, and gender equity. We find that the objectives of government and development actors are reflected in the emphasis on energy access in the National Action Plan and the government’s long-term development agenda, though a critical lack of engagement with the private sector has limited the policy’s effectiveness in mainstreaming women across energy sub-sectors beyond clean cooking. Women’s civil society organizations, historically less engaged with energy issues, have nonetheless achieved considerable success in advocating for increased women’s political participation. This advocacy has set a precedent for policies promoting “positive discrimination” for women and marginalized groups, evident in the policy’s activities aimed at electrifying women’s economic sectors.