Gender-inclusive strategies critical for India’s post-COVID recovery: CEEW Report
— Pranathi Sridhar
A new report by the Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW) shows that improving women’s productivity and incomes through reliable and affordable access to energy for economic activities could increase uptake of clean energy appliances and enable women-led enterprises to flourish. This directly contributes to achieving Sustainable Development Goals 5, 7, and 8 simultaneously.
The study looks at the various impediments that could stand in the way of women-led enterprises using clean energy sources. The methodology adopted to study this was focused on understanding women as end-users of energy products and appliances. They studied women who would typically depend on loans and sales to expand their business, and those running smaller, localised enterprises, who could be potential users of clean energy equipment. With the support from older surveys on enabling policies for women, interviews of women running micro-enterprises in different states and key stakeholders in the energy access chains, along with a survey on how Covid-19 pandemic has affected business of micro-enterprises, CEEW was able to identify the areas where interventions are required and the impact they could have.
Barriers to women-led micro-enterprises
Societal barriers:
As the household is an integral part of society, it was noted that women spent a considerable amount of their time in care work within the home, which has further increased due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Women reported spending close to 7 hours a day on care work and just 6.5 hours on business. Additionally, at the market level, women entrepreneurs require buy-ins and approvals of family members to make business-related decisions. This is due to lack of ownership of assets and their inability to make independent financial commitments.
Market barriers:
It was revealed that 54% of the women-led enterprises are unregistered and while 93% owned bank accounts, more than half of the transactions were cash-based. The financial system makes it difficult to access credit because it demands registration, collaterals, repayment capacity and other such conditions. Additionally, when clean energy is involved, institutions are hesitant to lend because the technology and products are relatively newer in the market. There are various gender-agnostic networks that women lack access to and they do not offer any product or service tailored to the needs of women.
State barriers:
Government schemes that include DRE are very few in number. The awareness and reach of these schemes are also limited. Since the capital cost of DRE products are slightly higher, the governments need to localise their approach depending on the kind of business machinery required. From the women surveyed in this study, more than half- the respondents have accessed certain government schemes, but they are mostly social protection schemes such as the Public Distribution System and housing. The lending process is long and arduous, and the turnaround time for a loan application of a women-based enterprise is longer than a men-based enterprise.
The problem in implementing gender-based policies is that the procedures remain gender-neutral. Lesser asset-ownership and longer follow-up times discourage women from accessing schemes due the already limited time they have for running their businesses.
Recommendations and potential to scale
Institutional Support-Building:
Key stakeholders such as policy-makers, investors and donors, NGOs, entrepreneur development programmes, clean energy enterprises and product suppliers must ensure that there is strong institutional support for women. Governments can provide social security programmes, credit schemes, tax benefits and other such measures that could also encourage men to share the care work. Investors can insist on gender-based design of businesses so that the enterprise planners incorporate it in their initial design plans. Clean energy enterprises can focus on inclusive operation and management of DRE equipment through marketing initiatives, and provide training to women and youth to be involved in energy management. EDPs and NGOs should provide training, and set up skill building exercises for women, and enable them to negotiate with better authority within their households as well.
Market mechanisms to access finance:
It is crucial for the clean energy enterprises to ensure that investments in DRE are viable. Acting as aggregators for end-user financing and providing margin-money assistance through philanthropic or revolving funds could ensure better lines of credit for women-led enterprises powered by DRE. Micro-finance institutions and banks could set up a separate credit system for ‘women-led enterprises’ so that the lending ticket sizes are larger. Customised loan products could be designed to suit the needs of women. Donors and financiers can invest in institutions that lend to women exclusively. They can extend their funds to raising asset-ownership of women.
Entrepreneur Development Programmes (EDPs):
The key role of EDPs should be to mainstream gender-lens in programme designs and clean energy business enterprises. They could partner with donors to enable a decentralised approach to focus on specific regions, rural areas or particular communities. EDPs could also partner with NGOs and technical experts to bridge information asymmetry between women entrepreneurs and other stakeholders, build targeted hand-holding programmes for women-led enterprises to address gender-related issues, and facilitate mentoring sessions to navigate access to schemes and technical support required by the women entrepreneurs.
Policy Access for women:
Policymakers can focus on providing additional support to women under the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) schemes and also integrate DRE-powered mechanisation to increase uptake of renewable energy among women. It is also necessary to gender-mainstream policy and regulation to mitigate gender-based challenges that women face. Women’s organisations and technical experts may support policymakers and governments in providing relevant ground-level data, and assisting in implementation of these policies by increasing awareness among women and communities they are part of.
In this phase of post-covid recovery in India, the report emphasizes the necessity for policymakers, donors, NGOs and civil society organisations to work towards improving productivity of women and reducing the excessive burden that women-led micro-enterprises face. The report states in its conclusion that, “Closing the gender gap in the economy would entail better targeting of funding for women and integration of gender-inclusive strategies in all sectors, including the energy sector.” A strong business case has been made for the clean energy sector and powering women-led micro-enterprises with DRE. Integrating clean energy into women’s entrepreneurship policy and involving the different stakeholders could impact not just the energy transition goals in the country but also improve women’s livelihoods and their place in society.
