Where intersectional feminism doesn't fit: Energy transition and Ubuntu feminism?

Abstract

Intersectional feminism has criticised neoliberal tendencies of energy access instructively through the intersectionality lens. The intersectional influence has resulted in the enactment of increased female and gender-sensitive energy policies under the banner of gendering energy poverty. That said, feminism has tended to draw much from Western philosophy–such that we remain dangerously focused on autonomous individuals. Drawing on Ubuntu feminism, I argue that our possibilities for just energy use lie in communality, particularly how it conceives the obligated ‘social bond’ rather than individualism and subordination. Through a conceptual paper exploring Ubuntu feminism, I challenge scholars of energy transition to perceive gendered ‘energy access’ through a deep appreciation of human interdependence, intersubjectivity, and relationality. More specifically, I propose nine grounds for Ubuntu feminism in energy analysis and practice, arguing that this is a promising relational ethic that merits application to energy matters. Any imperative to act morally is easier to understand through the prism of human interaction or put differently, within the context of relationships, than when viewed in the isolation of individual conduct. This analysis is timely because there is an urgent need for a more comprehensive moral energy policy to move from one that only seeks to ‘include’ women in technology and energy transition.