Feminist Power Perspectives for a Just Energy Transition (2024)

By Carlos Villaseñor, political scientist from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM)

Whenever the topic of gender is discussed in the creation of a larger agenda on any given topic there tends to be a simplification regarding the scale of the transformation in our systems that can be achieved through its inclusion. As a matter of fact, there seems to be an assumption that whatever change might come from integrating women into the existing system will not fundamentally alter its nature. This is by no means a new problem. Judith Evans, for example, pointed out this same problem almost 37 years ago while writing Feminism and Political Theory where she argued as follows:

“In the fifteen to twenty years since second-wave feminism began, much has been contributed to various academic disciplines by adherents of the movement. It is doubtful, though, whether the nature and practice of those disciplines have greatly changed. What is sure is that the study of politics has changed very little. We know more about how women vote, about their depiction in classic works of political thought, and about their virtual absence from the upper echelons of government. However, work on these topics has followed very conventional lines of inquiry. This in itself is not surprising. What is, perhaps, is that the movement appears to have made little to no impression in political theorizing [...]”^[i]

In the case of our energy systems, a growing body of research has allowed us to identify distinct characteristics between women and men as producers and consumers of energy. This has undoubtedly added to our understanding of energy poverty and vulnerability, energy resource management, technology development, education and workforce integration for the energy transition, etc. The aim of this article is to explore the implications of considering the gender-energy nexus beyond the integration of women into these categories and consider what feminist thought can contribute to the understanding of our institutions in the sector. More specifically, I strive to provide a brief introduction as to how energy systems have been gendered, the implications on the way they operate and what this means for the energy transition.

The central contribution of feminism to this article comes through the conceptualization of power. This is because, although understudied, there is no way to detach the design, implementation and use of energy systems from the creation, reinforcement or transformation of power relations.^[ii] A brief look at the two most commonly used definitions of the word in the academic literature can clarify the existence of this connection. The first one is established as power-over, meaning the capacity to get someone else to do something. Think of how easily compelled we are to pay our energy bills and you might start to realize how much control can be exerted over you through providing or withholding access to energy. The second one, described as power-to, is meant to define power as the capacity to act or to do something.^[iii] Once again, we can see the critical role that energy has, especially in modern societies, in transforming and/or enhancing the ways we work, study, play, communicate, etc.

Therefore, changes in the energy we produce and use bring with them sociotechnical transformations that can solidify or destabilize existing social hierarchies. However, so far, this potential restructuring of power has often been treated as a zero-sum game for dominance,^[iv] which makes each and every new oil or gas pipeline, power central, transmission and distribution line, a battleground to define the powerful and the powerless within our societies.

As a result, it is expected that whatever new order could result from shifts in power through changes in our energy systems, they will come about through the subordination of other people and nature itself. The energy transition is not immune to this logic and has been impacted by it in at least two significant ways. The most obvious one can be exemplified by the concept of petro-masculinity developed by some currents of ecofeminism. This concept aims to exemplify how fossil fuels help simultaneously build socioeconomic systems and identities. More specifically it posits that beyond the actual power that the dependency on fossil fuels of our societies and economies confers to those who control them, there is a symbolic element to its influence. During this period of intensive fossil fuel use there seems to be a certainty for men to easily achieve the mandates of masculinity, get a wife, kids, a house, be able to singlehandedly provide for all of them, etc. The transition away from these polluting inputs for our energy also seems to coincide with the slow crumbling of these assurances that men had about their place in the world. Faced with worse economic prospects, higher levels of competition in the job market, women’s rights movements, sexual liberation, etc. the reaction of many men has been to attempt to preserve their identity through an exaggeration of the elements they perceived are tied to recovering their lost masculinity. This includes the production and use of fossil fuels. Under these conditions, any effort to limit the use of fossil fuels or the transition to other forms of energy is seen not only as a national risk but a direct attack on one's identity which justifies the use of authoritarianism and violence to preserve the status quo.^[v] We have seen this being weaponized by recent far-right governments such as Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei in Argentina, etc.

Despite the need for urgency in addressing the previously described backlash against climate change science and the energy transition that has defined the rise of modern far-right movements, the second way in which conceiving power as domination can impact the energy transition is more subtle and has the potential to be much more insidious. It manifests not as direct opposition but as the subtle hijacking of the legitimacy that exists in the energy transition as a potential agent of change. This cooptation takes place by integrating the challenger into the elites’ decision-making structures giving them incentives to defend the elites’ position.^[vi] The Conferences of the Parts (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are actually one of the most prominent examples of this phenomenon. Challengers to the fossil fuel industry from across the world are in attendance from non-governmental organisations, indigenous groups, think tanks, activists, etc. In addition, language that was born from these organisations is also adopted from human rights, justice and democracy considerations. On its own what we have just described is not cooptation. As a matter of fact, it is a good thing to guarantee access to all stakeholders to solve one of the largest crises we have faced as a species. Cooptation happens when the inclusion is a result of the elites’ lack of legitimacy which is solved by awarding shared responsibilities to the challenger without actually changing the distribution of power in a meaningful way. This is explicitly what happens at COP and has resulted in the systematic failure to deliver on any of our global climate commitments. This logic is trickled down and emulated at the national and local level and as a direct consequence in our energy transitions the new technologies for renewable and clean energy are insufficiently implemented and in ways that follow the extractivist, colonial and patriarchal models of the past. The rising number of human rights abuses that have been linked to the proliferation of large-scale renewable energy projects or the materials needed for their creation, like lithium, in Latin America is a good example of this.

An alternative way to conceptualize power and move beyond domination and control has been established within feminist literature as empowerment. A variant of the concept of power as ‘power to act’, establishes power as a transformative and creational force that is built through the reciprocal relations we build with others. As infrastructure embodies the intentions of its designer,^[vii] leading our energy systems to reflect the vision of human agency and power of their makers, one must wonder what an energy system under the feminist conception of empowerment could potentially look like. Some scholars like Bell, Daggett and Labuski have already started to design frameworks to better understand how the feminist study of power can be translated into the design of our energy systems. They identified four dimensions meant to consider the interactions among different activities, infrastructures and agents. Table 1 offers a brief overview of them.^[viii]

Table 1. Dimensions of a Feminist Energy System

The elements considered within this article are but a general introduction to the necessity of further study into the power-gender-energy nexus if we want to understand the energy transition beyond a mere change in technology. Feminism can provide an understanding of the current framework with which power is being exercised in our energy systems as a form of domination. It also provides the opportunity to consider new configurations that can enhance existing demands for energy democratization and sufficiency that move away from traditional market and economic growth approaches. Reprising the argument made at the beginning of this article a feminist approach to energy democracy or sufficiency cannot be reduced to a mere inclusion issue but must consider the transformation of the concept itself when women gain access to it. What sufficient means changes radically when we consider in terms of energy when considering care work for example. The development of energy communities can be democratic beyond allowing citizens to take collective control of their generation and consumption by incorporating also the rights of nature into its design. This with the added benefit of doing it through a gender lens that may provide further insights into what these demands may be lacking or the way they could potentially replicate patriarchal oppression.

^[i] Evans, Judith. 1986. “IV Feminism within the discipline of political science.” In Feminism and Political Theory, 103-119. USA: Cambridge University Press.

^[ii] Ahlborg, Helen. (2017). “Towards a conceptualization of power in energy transitions”. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 25. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210422417300163

^[iii] Allen, Amy. “Feminist Perspectives on Power”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-power/

^[iv] Tong, Rosemarie. (2009). “Chapter 7- Ecofeminism”. In Feminist Thought. Westview Press.

^[v] Daggett, Cara. (2018). “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire”. Millennium Journal of International Studies. 47(1). https://www.pustaka-sarawak.com/eknowbase/attachments/1623207787.pdf

^[vi] Holdo, Markus. (2017). “Cooptation and non-cooptation: elite strategies in response to social protest”. Social Movement Studies. 18(4). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14742837.2019.1577133

^[vii] Ahlborg, Helen. (2017). “Towards a conceptualization of power in energy transitions”. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 25. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210422417300163

^[viii] Bell, Shannon Elizabeth; Dagget, Cara; Labuski Christine. (2020). “Toward feminist energy systems: Why adding women and solar panels is not enough”. Energy Research and Social Science. 68.