Approximately 2 billion people throughout the world do not have access to clean energy for cooking and about 1.7 billion people are without electricity for either cooking or heating. Grid- based electrical power fails to reach many rural and poor urban areas in developing countries, and there is also inadequate distribution of gas or other fuels for cooking and heating. The impact of such precarious situations is more pronounced on poor women than men because of the 1.2 billion people worldwide living on less than one dollar a day, 70 per cent are women.
In India, the 2001 census showed that nearly 700 million people do not have access to modern energy services. While nearly 300 million people do not have access to electricity, an even larger number (625 million) do not have access to modern cooking fuels Against this backdrop, this paper is a gender analysis carried out to promote an approach that would lead to national energy policies becoming more gender-responsive in terms of content and process.
The paper posits that the 11th five-year plan (2007-2012) invested more than $100 billion in the energy sector, including coal, oil, hydropower and other renewables and nuclear - but less than 2% of this went towards alleviating the drudgery suffered by women and children. Together, women and children collect close to 28% of all primary energy. However, no inputs in terms of investment, management or technology are provided to them- something that all other energy sectors take for granted.
In conclusion, the paper therefore recommends the following measures toward creating sound gender-responsive energy policies and, more importantly, their coordinated implementation:

reorient monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to reflect gender concerns in energy programmes
linking women’s empowerment with energy development
inter-ministerial coordination; and
making cooking fuel available within 1 kilometre of rural inhabitants