The gendered politics of rural electrification: education, indigenous communities, and impacts for the Venezuelan Guajira

Abstract

Rural electrification has often been promoted to improve women's access to education. However, no studies have been conducted to measure the actual impact of electrification on equitable access to education, qualitatively and quantitatively. This is particularly true when studying rural and indigenous communities in developing countries. The objective of this study is to comprehensively evaluate the impact of electrification on schooling for men and women in La Guajira (Venezuela). Their traditional indigenous rural communities were recently electrified with Renewable Energy Technologies (RET). The study focuses on eight communities that have never had electricity and whose location far from urban settlements limits other social relationships. During a week of total immersion in the fieldwork, the impact on 285 men and 273 women was analyzed through 43 household surveys. The results show that access to primary, secondary, and higher education has increased significantly thanks to coordinated education and electricity policies. School offers similar opportunities for both genders, but a higher percentage of indigenous women take advantage of the opportunity to study beyond the primary level. ; This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the project title: "Optimization of Micro networks with Renewable Energies under Uncertainty and Future Network Integration" (OMER-IFIR), RTI2018-097962-B-I00. This research was co-financed by Centre for Cooperation Development (CCD) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-Barcelona TECH (UPC) under the project title "Development of tools for the evaluation of energy projects", 2019-B014. This work has been possible thanks to the kind collaboration of the Wayuu people from the Venezuelan Guajira and Fundelec (Venezuela) engineers and technicians. ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (author's final draft)