Getting a snapshot of women’s employment in the power sector in Africa and South Asia

Increasing female economic workforce and participation, enhancing income-earning
opportunities, and improving women’s access to good quality jobs are focus areas of the World Bank Group Gender Strategy. However, the lack of sex-disaggregated data remains a main key barrier to designing interventions and monitoring their impacts.

With funding prospects from various departments like Department for International Development (DFID)/Energy and Economic Growth Program (EEG), the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) is leading in-depth research on employment in the energy sector. Led by the Africa Gender and Energy Program and the South Asia Women in Power Sector Professional Network (WePOWER), this research was conducted through a human resource (HR)-specific questionnaire.

The questionnaire was sent to energy institutions, primarily public and private power utilities, in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia in 2019 and early 2020. It was finished by 12
organizations – half in Pakistan, and half in the three African countries. The total staff footprint of the surveyed utilities is 92,727 people, of whom roughly 56% are in Pakistan.

By researching each utility’s policies along with the sex-disaggregated data is provided, we can create a gender snapshot of each company participating in the analysis & research. By totaling the data by country or region, as we do here, it is possible to clarify women’s roles in the sector and identify job categories where sex and gender discrepancies may be greatest.

The survey reports from countries like Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia confirmed the
less number of women working in the power sector:

● On average, the female gender constituted 21% of the overall workforce in energy utilities in
the African countries, and even lesser, 4% in Pakistan.
● Average share of female gender working in technical positions was 15% in the African
countries and remarkably low, 2% in Pakistan. Most women work in office-based
corporate functions, such as HR, finance, and customer service.
● The majority of female employees in the respondent companies, including women, work
in staff positions, junior or non-supervisory positions.
● In the 3 African countries, women are more likely to grasp managerial roles, specifically
in mid-management, accounting for 25% of those positions (although variations between
companies were significant).
● Specifically, in Pakistan, women represent 7% of mid-level managerial positions, and
even less at the senior and supervisory levels, at 2% and 4% respectively.

Graph of women employment

The utilities provide technical and professional training opportunities for employees. In the past 1 year, women accounted for 11% of total trainees in Pakistan, and 31% in the three African countries – both higher than average female staff number. The higher figures in the African countries are impacted by Kenyan companies’ responding to the country’s Constitutional requirement that states no gender should constitute more than two-thirds of the employees in publicly owned companies. Follow-up interviews show that this dictate is interpreted broadly, affecting everything from training opportunities to representation in union leadership.

Flexible work arrangements generally were not available in the surveyed regions, which might
contribute to the low percentages of women working in senior or supervisory positions. Lack of support – childcare, flextime, telework, and others – for working parents is likely to have a larger impact on women, who traditionally bear greater responsibility for childcare.