The role of energy poverty in gender inequality across health, employment, and education: A case study of ASEAN countries

With the increasing use of machinery in production and the proliferation of appliances that make life easier due to technological advancements, energy plays a crucial role in both the production sector and improving the quality of life. Therefore, societies without access to energy have faced significant disadvantages in this regard, making energy deprivation a subject of academic studies. Similarly, the deprivation of certain rights or opportunities solely based on gender constitutes another critical topic in social science. Although these two important issues have been extensively addressed in the literature through numerous studies, only a few works examine the relationship between them. In this context, this study aims to fill this gap and contribute to the literature by analyzing the effect of energy deprivation on gender inequality in the fields of education, employment, and health across five ASEAN countries from 1990 to 2021, using the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares-Mean Group (DOLS-MG) method. The findings of the study provide evidence that energy deprivation exacerbates gender inequality in all three areas. However, the impact of energy deprivation is most pronounced in the health sector, followed by employment, and is least significant in education. Based on the results, the study offers several policy recommendations to address these critical issues and provides suggestions for future research on the topic.