FEMENMAD Feminisation of energy poverty in Madrid. Exposure to thermal extremes.

The FEMENMAD project arose in light of the results from the technical study on energy poverty in the city of Madrid, which disclosed 23% of households at risk of energy poverty and pointed out households headed by women among most disadvantaged groups. As the official information available for analysing energy poverty was not disaggregated by sex, 16 mix or semi-structured interviews were carried out. These 16 households’ indoor thermal conditions were monitored as well. Interviews were accomplished with women who live in households suffering from energy poverty. The interviews were designed along with the social entities that provided the sample of households. All interviews were conducted at participants' residences, directly to women (or helped by relatives due to language).

They all allowed the installation of thermometers in the living room and in the main bedroom to record indoor temperature and relative humidity for a year. Moreover, in this project exposure to thermal extremes has been explored. The risk of suffering from summer energy poverty was firstly explored according to the gender of the main breadwinner within each household. The geospatial distribution of their vulnerability, as a function of income, was compared with other indicators related with their exposure to high temperatures: the housing energy efficiency and the UHI intensity. Then, an evaluation at the sub-municipal scale was carried out among the different subgroups in which a woman was the main breadwinner. The analysis of the selected variables was conducted using a hot spot analysis based in the Getis-Ord statistic (Gi*), which evaluated the autocorrelation of each variable according to its spatial distribution. The project included an analisys of the couses of morbidity and mortality by age and sex in the city of Madrid from cold spells or heat waves demonstrating that women are more vulnerable group to the impacts of thermal extremes on their health.

With a budget between 10 000 and 100 000 euros, the activities developed include:

1. Analysis of the feminisation of energy poverty at the local level in the city of Madrid through the income and expenditure approach.
2. Analysis of the feminisation of energy poverty at the Regional level in Madrid through the income and expenditure approach.
3. Qualitative analysis through interviews and monitoting indoor temperatures.
4. Analysis of feminisation of energy poverty through the living conditions approach.
5. Study of impact of thermal extremes in health.
6. Recommendations for improvement in the public policies of Madrid in the area of housing and health.
7. Workshops to understand energy bills.

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  Countries impacted:
  

  Spain
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  Geographical scale:
  

  National
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  Energy poverty phase:
  

  Diagnosis

  Implementation
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  Intervention type:
  

  Data collection

  Monitoring and Impact Assessment

  Stakeholders' Engagement
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  Professionals involved:
  

  Engineer

  Member of a local/national authority

  Researcher

  Technician
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  Partners involved:
  

  UPM - Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
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  Type of funding:
  

  Local funds from the Madrid City Council under the call "2018 Grants to carry out research projects on global citizenship and international cooperation for Development"
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  Website:
  Case website
• SDGs addressed: