Energy poverty disproportionately affects women and girls.

Access to energy is a precondition for health, education and economic prosperity – an essential multiplier to meet every Sustainable Development Goal, including SDG 5 for gender equality. Until access gaps are closed, gender equality cannot be achieved. Lack of access to modern energy has disproportionate negative impacts on women’s and girls’ health and safety due to their care work burdens – from exposure to indoor air pollution from cooking with dirty fuels, to the heavy loads and risks of traveling long distances to collect biomass. These tasks contribute to the overwhelming time poverty of women and girls, which limits their opportunities for engaging in income generation, education or leisure.

Clean energy can be transformative for gender equality. When women own and benefit from productive uses of energy, such as for paid work or for healthcare, opportunities for economic empowerment and resilience are unleashed. Further, the greening of the energy sector provides the chance to redress labour segregation in the sector and ensure women have new and better labour opportunities.  

Too often, the energy sector as a whole – from industry to policymaking – fails to include women as energy users, decision-makers or powerful drivers of a just energy transition. But when a gender perspective is prioritized, clean energy projects and policies can enable development for whole communities – leaving no one behind.    

UNDP aims to close gender gaps in access to modern, sustainable energy. With an ambitious goal of closing energy gaps for 500 million people by 2025, UNDP will work to ensure at least half are women.