Energy, equality and sustainability? European electricity cooperatives from a gender perspective

The European electricity market and energy security have recently become heatedly discussed topics at the European Union level. In many countries, political and financial support for the transition towards renewable energy systems during the last two decades have encouraged the establishment of a substantial number of new electricity cooperatives. Cooperatives, as social enterprises, demonstrate attachment to values such as equity and equality in their actions, thus they might be perceived as women-friendly entities. However, little empirical research on that topic has been carried out in the European Union so far. The pilot study presented in this paper fills this gap by determining if gender perspective is reflected in the European electricity cooperatives' declarations and actions and whether this perspective is related to cooperative size, adopted mode of governance and cultural determinants of the region/country. This paper shows why gender equality is valuable to electricity cooperatives and how the presented research results may be useful to practitioners, researchers and policy makers.