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Evidence of multidimensional gender inequality in energy services from a large-scale household survey in India

Nature Energy volume 7, pages 698–707 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Energy access delivers broad socio-economic benefits, but few studies have examined how benefits are allocated within the household. Here we conduct a large-scale survey with 4,624 respondents across six Indian states to provide results on intra-household differences across multiple outcome dimensions of energy service, including knowledge, satisfaction, utilization and opinion. Using a Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) to measure household-level gender equality, we find that women in low-WEI households are less aware of energy services and use less electricity than their spouses. This awareness gap manifests in differences in satisfaction, as women in higher-WEI households show more concern with energy services and fuel sources. Overall, these results signify that the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach of providing energy access may not effectively meet the goal of sustainable energy for all. Bridging the gender gap through targeted information and learning campaigns that empower and educate women could unlock additional support for sustainable energy policies.

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Fig. 1: Geographic coverage and key statistics of the Gender Perception Survey for Energy Access and Use.
Fig. 2: Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI).
Fig. 3: Across-household gender inequality in energy services.
Fig. 4: Within-household gender inequality in energy services.

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Data availability

The survey questionnaire and technical documentation are available in Supplementary Notes 1 and 9. The survey data are anonymous and publicly available on Harvard Dataverse39 at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GV85BL. Fig. 1 uses India administrative boundary shape files by Anuj Tiwari, publicly available on GitHub. Supplementary Table 7 uses NFHS data for summary statistics, available at https://www.iipsindia.ac.in/content/nfhs-project.

Code availability

Code for replicating results in this article is publicly available67 on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6511986.

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Acknowledgements

S.P., S.J. and S.A. were supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (grant number 17-1705-151972-CLS) for survey data collection and verification. C.F.G. was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (grant number F31 ES ES031833).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Alice Tianbo Zhang

  2. Department of Economics, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, USA

    Alice Tianbo Zhang

  3. Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), Delhi, India

    Sasmita Patnaik, Shaily Jha & Shalu Agrawal

  4. Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Carlos F. Gould

  5. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Carlos F. Gould

  6. School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, USA

    Johannes Urpelainen

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Contributions

A.T.Z. conceived and designed survey, contributed to data collection and verification, performed data analysis and wrote the paper. S.P. contributed to survey design and led data collection and verification. S.J. contributed to survey design and contributed to data collection and verification. S.A. contributed to survey design and conducted survey sampling. C.F.G. contributed to survey design and verification. J.U. conceived the survey and oversaw the administration of the project. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alice Tianbo Zhang.

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Zhang, A.T., Patnaik, S., Jha, S. et al. Evidence of multidimensional gender inequality in energy services from a large-scale household survey in India. Nat Energy 7, 698–707 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01044-3

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