The PFAN Gender Strategy
PFAN recognises not only its responsibility but also the opportunity to contribute towards the overarching goal of gender equality and the empowerment of women within both its internal operations and regional activities and wants to address embedded and unconscious gender biases internally and externally. PFAN’s gender strategy is built on this foundation.
The PFAN Gender Strategy has three main objectives:
- To achieve greater, more sustainable, equitable outcomes and impacts in an efficient and comprehensive manner by empowering women to actively contribute to and benefit from PFAN’s network and services;
- To encourage every project supported by PFAN to be gender-responsive so that women’s and men’s resilience and ability to address climate change, as well as access to clean energy, are equally enhanced, and that women’s and men’s potential as agents of environmental sustainability is best leveraged; and
- To increase the pool of women-led and gender-responsive projects in the clean energy and climate sector to reduce the gender gap in climate change-exacerbated social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities.
Gender Responsiveness at PFAN
The PFAN Gender Action Plan
Reaching the objectives of PFAN’s Gender Strategy requires working with all stakeholders, notably with project developers and business owners, investors, and members of the PFAN network. The strategy has been translated into the PFAN Gender Action Plan which includes action points for each stakeholder group:
- PFAN supports female entrepreneurs in accessing financing and expects to increase the pool of women-led and gender-focused projects by creating and promoting role models and success stories for other women.
- PFAN intends to play a central role in sensitizing project developers and investors on the strengths of gender-balanced portfolios and influence the climate finance environment by educating and raising awareness of the benefits of gender equality.
- PFAN adds different sets of skills and improves team dynamics by providing women and men with the same opportunity to be part of PFAN: as employees, coordinators, entrepreneurs, or network members.
Applying a Gender Lens
Since 2019, PFAN has been intensifying its efforts to achieve its gender objectives. In 2020, PFAN turned its focus toward virtually-held regional gender awareness trainings for its network (check out our 2020 Annual Report for more information). In 2021, with the support of Value for Women and generously Funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), PFAN has started to work on how to apply a gender lens to its various activities, including capacitating all PFAN advisors to make them more effective agents of change and drive and influence gender-equitable change. This was highlighted at the Gender Smart Investing Summit in February 2021, and is at the core of the commitment UNIDO made on “Embedding gender smart practices in climate entrepreneurship ecosystems”.
A practical step moving forward to this commitment was the workshop “Embedding Gender-Smart Practices in Climate Entrepreneurship Support” held on 16 September 2021. The objective of this event was to raise awareness, influence and inspire entrepreneur support organizations and investors in clean energy and climate change adaptation to become more gender-smart in their operations, ultimately mobilising more capital for a just energy transition (check out our news article for more information).
For more updates on PFAN’s work on gender follow our social media campaign #PFANforEquality (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook).
Environment 360, Ghana
I strongly believe that strengthening the role of women in renewable energy through better education and other measures would boost progress towards SDGs on energy, gender equality, health and education, amongst others. In PFAN, I have the unique advantage of being on both sides of the table. I am the co-founder of Radix Lifespaces Pvt. Ltd and a PFAN Advisor , coaching developers from an entrepreneurial point of view, and act as the bridge between entrepreneurs and investors.