A new report by the GSI looks at gender relations and data with regard to fossil-fuel subsidy reform, and looks at the likely impact of reform across cooking, lighting, water pumping and transport fuels from a gender perspective. The report has four main observations. First, fossil-fuel subsidies (13.7% of India’s budget expenditure in 2012-2013) have historically provided little benefit for rural women. Two thirds of people still use firewood or dung-cake for cooking, biomass fuels linked to many deaths from indoor air pollution. Benefits from fossil-fuel subsidies rather go to higher income groups that consume greater amounts of fuel. Government spending on fossil-fuel subsidies is almost double that of health. In rural areas fossil-fuel subsidies have not worked and are not targeted at women or the poor.

Second, reform of subsidies should aim to do no harm to women. Inequality and gender differences in India are huge, across measures such as access to nutrition, health, education and employment. Reform of kerosene subsidies, especially where kerosene is used for cooking in urban areas, should be approached with care. As should electricity subsidy reforms, which in some States have lead to increased prices in water pumped from generators for agriculture. Just over 25% of adult women have access to bank accounts, compared to just over 40% of men. Research conducted for GSI on direct benefit transfers designed to compensate groups during the reform of both liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and kerosene subsidies found that a major flaw is the inability of women to access cash through the banking system. Financial inclusion will be critical in enabling targeted cash transfers, aimed at compensating people during the process of reform, to reach women.

Third, reform of fossil-fuel subsidies will likely affect women in different ways to men. Changes in pricing of cooking fuels will likely affect women more than men, whereas men are more likely to feel the impact of increased transport costs. Understanding the impact of energy policy and reform on women is complicated, in that national energy survey data, unlike family health survey data, is not yet broken down by gender. There have been efforts in the past to undertake national time-use surveys, and gender analysis for parts of the energy sector, but these need updating.

Finally, fossil-fuel subsidy reform could aim to improve the lives of women if compensation is targeted at women and prioritises the needs of over 800 million people whose current cooking needs are met through biomass. Reform could include targeted in-kind or energy access interventions (e.g. electrification, biogas, clean cook stoves, managed woodlots, and LPG for kerosene programs with on-time subsidies for up-front costs).  For example the government now aims to replace 200,000 water pumps with solar pumps. The process of reform could also aim to empower women directly through other means such as increasing access to bank accounts, cash transfers, credit, land and voice within the community, thus enabling women to push for cleaner fuels directly themselves.