The gender issue in energy project planning. Welfare, empowerment or efficiency?

The gap between gender policy as adopted by governments and donors, and the inclusion of gender issues in energy planning practice at project level, is great, despite the fact that there are many manuals available which demonstrate how to go about gathering gender-based data and analysing this. This gap is partly due to difficulties in translating policy into achievable objectives at project level, which in itself is due to differences of opinion on what the motive is for including gender as a variable. Three main motivations are identified, and is it shown that once this has been done, the choice of planning tools, instruments and approaches for gender sensitive energy project planning falls more easily into place.