Women Empowerment through Clean Energy Transition in Pakistan: Prospects and Opportunities ^†

Abstract

This study explores the multifaceted approach required to promote womens empowerment through micro-hydropower projects (MHPPs) in the northern regions of Pakistan. By integrating education, skill development, economic opportunities, healthcare access, community engagement, infrastructure development, and legal support, the research outlines how MHPPs can significantly enhance women’s socio-economic status. Using both quantitative data from surveys and qualitative insights from consultative discussions, the findings highlight the positive impacts and challenges faced by women. The results demonstrate the potential of MHPPs to empower women, improve their livelihoods, and contribute to sustainable development. The study emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive strategy that includes education, healthcare, and community engagement to maximize the benefits of MHPPs for women empowerment.

1. Introduction

Globally, 800 million people do not have access to electricity and over 2.6 billion lack clean cooking facilities. Driven by this, women spend around 40% of their family’s income on inefficient and hazardous kerosene [1]. As the global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy accelerates, the clean energy sector presents unique economic and social opportunities that can significantly benefit women. Pakistan as per its Nationally Determined Contributions and Alternate and Renewable Energy Policy aims to generate 60% of its energy from clean sources by 2030 [2]. This involves a substantial move towards wind and solar power to diversify its energy mix and lower carbon emissions. Women currently make up only 20% of the renewable energy workforce, but they possess the skills, perspectives, and innovative mindset to play powerful roles as entrepreneurs, executives, and employees in this rapidly growing industry [3].

In Pakistan, women are increasingly leading the clean energy sector, bringing their skills and innovative ideas to advance renewable energy solutions. Initiatives like the Asian Development Bank’s Access to Clean Energy Investment Program aid Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab in expanding renewable energy access, including micro-hydropower and solar plants are focusing on empowering women and girls [4]. Involving more women in the clean energy sector can raise societal awareness about the benefits of renewable energy, as women often have a strong passion for health and environmental issues. Pakistan endorsed the COP28 Gender-Responsive Just Transitions and Climate Action Partnership; the partnership’s emphasis on data, finance, education, and capacity building is crucial for Pakistan to address the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change and support women’s resilience and leadership in the transition to a low-carbon economy [5].

1.1. Energy Poverty and Gender Inequality in Pakistan’s Energy Sector

Access to energy is crucial for health, education, and economic prosperity, essential for achieving all sustainable development goals, including SDG 5 for gender equality. Gender inequality is evident in Pakistan’s energy sector, where women hold only 6% of ministerial positions responsible for national energy policies and programs [6]. Despite economic progress, energy poverty in Pakistan has increased over the past two decades, particularly affecting low-income, less-educated, and female-headed households [7]. Women are underrepresented in technical and engineering fields related to energy, making up only 10% of the workforce [8]. Women entrepreneurs in Pakistan face significant challenges; they are underrepresented in entrepreneurship despite their potential to green economic sectors. They seek to enhance their climate action capacity and access green loans, yet struggle with loan management, collateral ownership, affordability, and the complexity of loan processes, particularly in the services sector [9].

1.2. The Clean Energy Transition as a Catalyst for Women Empowerment

In Pakistan, women constitute 25% of the workforce, compared to 31% in Bangladesh and 36% in India. Despite these figures, all these countries have exceptionally low numbers of women in the energy sector, with even fewer in clean energy, and Pakistan has the lowest percentage in South Asia [10,11]. Strategies to address energy poverty in Pakistan must prioritize women’s needs by enhancing their energy access, reducing reliance on polluting fuels, and including their voices in energy decision-making. Engaging women in off-grid renewable energy deployment necessitates training, skill development, access to finance, and integrating gender considerations into energy access programs [12].

Now the clean energy transition considerably benefits women in economic, educational, health, social, and environmental areas. Economically, through the MHPP pioneering approach within Pakistan’s shift to clean energy, there exists a noteworthy prospect for women empowerment and financial growth within northern areas. Native small-scaled water harvesting energy plants have a persistent effect upon women’s everyday lives. Principally, MHPPs disdain the precarious and labor rigorous chore of accumulating timber. This provides significant extra time for activities including child rendering, gaining education, and cost-effective chores. Furthermore, enterprise chances are solved through uninterrupted means of electricity [13].

Upholding a consistent means of clean energy can permit women to have initiative and cultivate home-grown small-scale businesses, which can rise domestic revenue and endorse fiscal development. Additionally, MHPPs provide women with uninterrupted admittance towards employment within process, maintenance, and construction. Tailored courses equip them with the skills that they require, and communal small enterprises, which vend clean energy, offer a stage for them to develop into front-runners and harden their economic responsibilities [14]. Overall, this clean energy shift, assisted through MHPPs, proposes an all-inclusive approach for women empowerment. It confronts time, scarcity, energy shortage, destitution and unlocks gates for producing profits, and offers prospects for headship and skill advancement.

Health benefits include reduced indoor air pollution from transitioning to clean energy, decreasing respiratory illnesses among women and saving time previously spent collecting firewood [15]. Women’s involvement in clean energy projects, such as those by Solar Sister and Barefoot College, enhances their leadership roles and social status, positioning them as advocates for gender equality and sustainable development [16]. This participation also positions women as advocates for gender equality and sustainable development policies. Women frequently spearhead initiatives to promote sustainable practices in their communities. The clean energy transition is consistent with these initiatives, encouraging commitment to the environment and resistance to climate change [17].

However, issues like access to money and the need for gender-sensitive policy persist. Microfinance and subsidy programs are required to support women’s clean energy projects, and raising the knowledge of clean energy benefits for women empowerment is critical for wider acceptability [18]. The clean energy transition greatly empowers women by improving their economic possibilities, educational achievement, health, social status, and environmental leadership, so promoting sustainable development and gender equality.

1.3. Women Empowerment through Decentralized Renewable Energy Sector

Pursuant to 2021, there will exist more than 12.7 million employments within the renewable energy realm, conferring to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Encompassed within this are positions in decentralized renewable energy (DRE) systems. Nevertheless, women’s participation within this domain overall is, nonetheless, diminished, particularly with respect to businesses other than solar PV, where they verify 40% of the workforce [19]. This reveals a wider DRE drift; research, for example, demonstrates that 37% of women in Ethiopia contribute to DRE [20]. The impacts of MHPPs upon women within Pakistan’s northern regions concerning job creation are not well known. Nevertheless, proof points to the possible innovatory environment of the reliable energy delivered via MHPPs.

By providing women with balanced authority, MHPPs will empower them to be involved in a grander range of revenue-creating occupations. They can inaugurate side-hustles from home-based food stalls and sewing boutiques. Women who have childcare duties will be advantaged momentously from comprehensive waged hours, predominantly in the afternoons. As a result of their improved revenue and tractability, they will be well-prepared to fund their communities and accomplish grander economic independence and monetary empowerment.

Comprehensive working hours and a harmless environment are made likely through better electricity delivered through MHPPs. Electrical machines can also mechanize chores, bestowing women additional time to manage a heftier job and be involved in multifaceted deeds. This has the prospective to enhance momentously efficiency and raise revenues [21].

Women can be employed within operation, maintenance, and construction of MHPPs individually. Training courses can offer them the skills they require to prosper within these arenas, offering them a means to create revenue and achieve monetary empowerment. Women who make more money will have greater domestic earnings, which will proliferate their purchasing power within the community. This raises customer demand for local merchandise and services, which could result in generating innovative employment, thereby advancing empowerment of women to function as business holders and participants of community workers [22].

Women within developing states are excessively influenced by energy shortage, which confines their forecasts for attaining socioeconomic development. Through proposing clean, local power generation that can be accustomed to fulfil the requirements of girls and women, DRE solutions seal this void. Improved passage to energy makes women more economically mobile, proliferates their admission into the work landscape, and places them as significant representatives of socioeconomic development [23].

DRE emboldens women to initiate their individual businesses. They can inaugurate small-scale businesses that depend upon clean energy, like solar-powered mobile charging places and enterprises marketing DRE products, and they can also initiate businesses marketing, installing, or fixing DRE systems [24]. Pakistan can harness its clean energy switch to attain not only its environmental objectives but also its wider social and economic goals, empowering women and nurturing a more wide-ranging and thriving future. This can be attained through advantageously boosting women’s involvement within MHPP enlargement, operation, management, and maintenance.

2. Methodology

This paper surveyed the way in which Pakistan’s transition to clean energy could empower women, with specific stress upon the role of distributed micro-hydropower plants (MHPPs) within the state’s northern areas. A mixed methods approach was employed across the study owing to the subject’s intricacy. For the purpose of collecting knowledge and advancing the comprehensive representation of women empowerment in relation to Pakistan’s swing to clean energy, this survey united qualitative and quantitative methods.

The opulent, comprehensive knowledge concerning the understanding and perspectives of numerous participants was made probable through the use of qualitative methods. Open-ended dialogs were formed through consultative dialogues and public-private interchanges. Specialists in the field, and representatives of the community interchanged thoughts regarding prospects and impediments confronting women within the clean energy transition. Moreover, concentrated interviews with significant participants increased the likelihood to probe in-depth into specific foci, including the prospects and complications confronted by women throughout this transition. This made it probable for the survey to document both general patterns and the diverse understandings of individual participants.

An orderly survey carried out throughout different parts of Pakistan, with the stress on the northern areas most impacted through MHPP, was the center for quantitative data collection. The cross-sectional methodology employed within this survey permitted the gathering of data from a descriptive sample of the population at a particular moment. Three significant groups were the emphasis of this survey: subject experts, residents (households), and the MHPP workforce. By assembling the understanding of varied groups, this study anticipated measuring the inclusive effect of MHPPs upon women empowerment.

3. Results, Discussion, and Policy Recommendations

The survey that examined women’s observations with micro-hydropower projects (MHPPs) was undertaken within the mountainous northern areas of Pakistan. Outside of just gauging access to electricity, the aim of this survey and the research in general was to understand impacts of these projects upon numerous facades of women’s lives. Findings of the survey yield a multidimensional depiction of having chances and opportunities (Figure 1) The survey’s results deliver discerning knowledge regarding the ways MHPPs impact women’s reach to socio-ecological subjects, well-being, and fiscal prospects within northern areas (this data is further illustrated in Figure 1).

As represented in Figure 1, the survey’s outcomes specify that women’s financial opportunities within Pakistan’s northern areas are promising. Women are currently capable of contributing in hitherto limited revenue-making works in acknowledgement to the MHPP steadfast clean energy generation. This can involve initiating small-scale businesses which can involve working from home on a virtual basis. As a consequence of these resourceful chances, women have been endorsed to develop domestic revenue; this pattern is testified when conferring to the survey. Also, MHPPs harvest works, totaling economic development of the community and providing women with opportunities towards attaining employment.

Paybacks of MHPPs exceed the exterior of merely gifting women within mountainous areas financial sovereignty. Cultivating the convenience of electricity impacts a significant upgrading of well-being. Modern households have improved lighting, which improves security and creates stress-free work in the evening. Women are capable of connecting with their relatives effortlessly owing to the development of their interpersonal skills. Moreover, partaking in the organization of day today tasks like obtaining washing machines can considerably decrease the volume of housekeeping chores needed to be completed, giving women additional time to partake in social engagements and academic studies.

As examined in Figure 1, across mountainous regions, MHPPs propose reassuring profits for women empowerment; nevertheless, it denotes essentially identifying that there exists undesirable impacts upon biodiversity, health, and social landscapes. A detailed contemplation of these concerns is obligatory for receptive implementation, particularly concerning women’s involvement. Possible disturbance to indigenous biomes is one chief apprehension. Aquatic habitates might suffer if watercourses are transformed and water flow is averted throughout MHPP production. This might impact women who rely on customary fishing means and food sources for survival and income generation. Additionally, alterations to water movement patterns might have an effect on ecosystems and thus on conventionally female-run agriculture.

A social skirmish might also arise while the MHPP is being established. It is conceivable that community profits from plans, land purchase processes, and resource distribution selections would not be distributed justly. Clashes and tensions can ascend from this, particularly if women are not amply valued in decision-making. Moreover, a cascade of foreign workforces for infrastructure projects could possibly destabilize societal norms and raise alarms regarding women’s security within the area.

Conferring to the survey findings, MHPPs possess the prospective to empower women within northern areas of Pakistan. However, probable incapacitating social and environmental impediments demand cautious development to avoid robust stress upon engagement of the community. Thus, MHPPs can back the crafting of a future in which all persons have the right to socio-economic well-being amid environmental security while assuring that the outlooks of women are recognized and given due attention.

4. Conclusions and the Way Forward

A comprehensive strategy can strengthen women’s position within communities impacted by micro-hydropower projects (MHPPs). Education and skill development are crucial for empowering women to participate actively in maintaining and operating micro hydropower projects (MHPPs). By offering technical training programs tailored to MHPPs and vocational education in entrepreneurship and IT, women can significantly enhance their capacity to initiate and manage effectively businesses in this sector. Economic opportunities for women can be broadened by introducing microfinance schemes, grants, and providing green finance, which promote entrepreneurship and foster financial independence. Healthcare access powered by MHPPs can significantly improve women’s health outcomes, reducing the reliance on traditional biomass fuels and associated health risks.

What is essential for women empowerment and operative MHPPs is community engagement. It emboldens possession and offers women influence and voice. Unlocked discussions assure that plans fulfill their requirements; for instance, water pumps lessen water assembly loads. Women having business prospectives, who can reap earnings from clean-energy or home-centered enterprises, are also acknowledged through this arrangement. Working collectively provides women with additional influence and nurtures confidence. Moreover, nurturing them for MHPP processes and corresponding training courses halts gender stereotypes and upturns self-confidence and governance capabilities.

Infrastructure development, powered by MHPPs, can improve water and sanitation facilities, enhancing women’s quality of life. Legal and policy support, advocating for gender-sensitive policies and equal rights to land and property, creates an enabling environment for women to benefit from MHPP-related economic opportunities. Leveraging digital solutions can facilitate women’s participation in MHPPs through mobile apps, online platforms, and digital marketplaces that enable women entrepreneurs to sell MHPP-related products and services, while digital tools enable remote monitoring and maintenance. Promoting women’s leadership, fostering partnerships, addressing social and cultural barriers, and implementing robust monitoring and evaluation are crucial to enhancing the participation and empowerment of women in the MHPP sector..