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.
The PFAN Gender Action Plan Toolkit
To put actions in practice, PFAN has developed practical action points and tools in applying a gender lens to PFAN’s advisory services. For this purpose, PFAN, in collaboration with Value for Women, has developed a Gender Action Plan toolkit accompanied by self-paced training modules for our network members. The main objectives of the tool kit are:
- To equip the PFAN network with practical tools to guide entrepreneurs on embedding gender intentionality in their business through developing a Gender Action Plan and helping them increase project investment readiness.
- To support entrepreneurs in establishing their baseline gender-responsiveness status and create a roadmap of their intended gender journey. Additional videos that support this process have been developed to support this process.
- To guide reviewers in assessing the Gender Action Plans in alignment with PFAN requirements and the PFAN Gender Marker, a gender self-assessment for the businesses and advisors.
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.