Bangladesh clean energy shift gives women little chance to shine

When Shefali Khatun separated from her husband, her biggest worry was how she would support her young son and cover all the expenses for their home in central Bangladesh - without a job.

Then she heard about a programme run by a Bangladeshi green energy initiative that teaches women to build and fix solar-power systems. She signed up, despite having no engineering background or experience in the renewable energy sector.

Five years on, Khatun now works making solar equipment and earns about 10,000 taka ($95) a month, enough to meet her family’s needs and send her son to school.

“This work changed my fortune and helped me become self-reliant,” she said from her home in Mymensingh. “I discovered women, also, can be self-dependent and able to support their families.” Bangladesh’s fledgling clean energy industry, which the country says is crucial for increasing access to renewable power and curbing its already low greenhouse gas emissions, is creating thousands of new jobs and, with them, opportunities for more women to join the workforce, say industry experts.

More and more Bangladeshi women are reaching for those opportunities.

A report finalised by the European Union last week said the share of women students enrolled in a masters programme on renewable energy at the University of Dhaka’s Institute of Energy, in the capital city, rose from 17 per cent to 27 per cent between 2019 and 2021.

But some climate campaigners and gender experts say Bangladesh’s clean energy transition is still leaving women behind, with the government and companies not doing enough to allow women to benefit from the push to cut carbon emissions, even as they are hardest hit by the impacts of climate change.

Bright Green Energy Foundation, the nongovernmental organisation that trained Khatun, has helped more than 5,000 women workers acquire skills in manufacturing and repairing equipment for solar home systems over the past decade, said chairman Dipal

Barua. If Bangladesh wants to reach its goal of sourcing 40 per cent of its electricity from renewables by 2041, it needs more women to build up the workforce that installs and maintains the systems supplying much of that clean energy, he added. “The solar power expansion in rural areas would be unthinkable without involving women,” he said.

Efforts to cut carbon emissions have created about 12.7 million jobs in renewables worldwide and that number could nearly quadruple by 2050, according to a report published this year by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). In the solar photovoltaic (PV) sector, the largest employer in the field of renewables, the report said globally women make up 40 per cent of full-time roles involved in developing, building and installing solar energy systems.

But most of those are in administrative jobs - when it comes to positions in the PV sector related to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), less than a third are filled by women.

Bangladesh does not collect gender-segregated data on the make-up of its renewable energy sector, but those working in the industry say they see the same pattern in their companies. —

BANGLADESH DOES NOT COLLECT GENDERSEGREGATED DATA ON THE MAKE-UP OF ITS RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR, BUT THOSE WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY SAY THEY SEE THE SAME PATTERN IN THEIR COMPANIES