Social practices, gender, and materiality: Women's agency in bioenergy-dependent households and communities in the central Ethiopian Rift Valley

Abstract

Current energy-related practices in bioenergy-dependent households and communities regularly reinforce social inequality and exacerbate environmental challenges. By investigating women's influence on rural energy service provision, this study sheds light on gendered practices and women's agency in a case study of three villages in central Ethiopia.

Women's lives in these communities revolve around practices such as collecting wood and using fire for cooking, hygiene, or space heating. Energy-efficient technologies like cookstoves are peddled as solutions to the day-to-day challenges women face. While these can enhance health and well-being, a one-sided focus on technology overlooks the deep-seated social meanings that limit the agency of women. Energy research urgently needs to improve its understanding of how women may alter energy-related social practices, to avoid that technocratic approaches entrench the provision of energy services as a gendered female chore.

This interdisciplinary research employs a Stock-Flow-Practice nexus perspective to analyse interlinkages between agency, practices, meanings, and the use of materials. Study results reveal that the agency of women to change their engagement in energy-related practices is curtailed by social prescriptions within the investigated households and communities. However, in households where women can garner higher levels of agency, they are able to shift how their households engage in practices.

Our findings highlight the importance of understanding women's agency as unfolding through their engagement in social practices and reflecting negotiated social prescriptions. Policies and programmatic interventions towards sustainable and equitable energy transitions in bioenergy-dependent communities need to incorporate a practice-centred concept of agency to reach their goals.