“Thank God we have light. We’ve never had light before. It is a very important benefit,” said Francisca Rivera, in her home in Santa Rosa, a village near Panama City, Panama. Santa Rosa is only an hour-and-a-half from Panama City, but given how difficult is to access due to rugged terrain, until recently it had no access to electricity. Although Latin America and the Caribbean has reached almost 96% access to electricity, there are still 25 million people living without light.
According to Jane Ebinger, managing director of the United Nations initiative Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All), when planning energy access, we should focus on two important questions: “How can women have a voice and participate in the delivery of energy solutions?” and “How can we ensure that the most vulnerable populations are not left behind?” Energy access projects should include the participation of women in all phases, including design and implementation. Currently there is significant inequality in participation because men are often the decision makers and also make up a majority the technical specialists in the field. However, women spend the most time at home and are the main users of energy in the home, which means their needs must also be taken into account. “If the gender issue has not been addressed it is possible that new energy technologies will be monopolized by the male population, who are usually in positions of power as compared to women. In such cases, new technologies don’t impact women’s lives, and women continue to live in almost the same conditions as when there was no light,” says Melina Campos, program manager of Green Energy at Hivos.
The Sustainable Rural Electrification Project in Panama, which is funded by USD $10 million from the IDB is installing solar panels on 16,126 houses, 45 schools and 10 health centers in rural communities in the country. The project started in July 2016 and panels have already been installed in over 600 houses.
In the indigenous community of Guna Yala, an area located in the archipelago of the Mulatas in the Caribbean Sea, the project included a focus on gender and diversity in the design stage. One of the goals was to achieve an increase in labor activities in making molas, a traditional piece of clothing and the primary economic activity of women in the region. To learn more, watch a video about the project here (Spanish only).
In the community of Santa Rosa, which is also a beneficiary of the project, I met Emma Hill, who owns a small shop that occupies part of the house and explained that light, “helps us with our business.” Eva de Cárdenas, 49, who is from the same community, is also the owner of a small business that now has four lights. She said the solar panel in front her home is useful because, “I have had the system for a month. We had no light before. Now we have light which helps because I have this business, and there are people that come in the evening.” These declarations show how women can benefit from light just as much as men. This is why their participation in the design of projects plays an important role in the success of energy projects.
Technicians also installed solar panels in churches and schools in Santa Rosa. Celia María Cárdenas, whose son played nearby, explained, “He is 4-years-old and does not study yet, but if he were a student, he could study at night.”
I stopped by the community health center where I met Dr. Walter Villareal, who told me that the solar panel on the roof of the clinic provides enough electricity for light and to refrigerate vaccines. Most of his patients are pregnant women, and the clinic represents an important advance women’s health in the area.
According to Campos, who recently worked on an energy project with women in rural Nicaragua, when an energy project does not take into account the variables of gender, “gender gaps may increase because energy, like any technology, changes the way of life of people and therefore their personal interactions.” Rural electrification projects that involve women in every aspect of design and planning create a more equal and just society and one that empowers women.
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