Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Critiques in Energy Research: A Review and Call for Transversal Thinking

This article presents a narrative review of recent energy research that engages with critical sexuality, gender, and feminist theories. We find that these important theories are generally considered by the literature in three ways through identifying and framing the problem, designing implementation and governance processes, and offering long-term visioning and ideals. Emerging scholarship advances valuable insights on the unequal treatment of women and other minority groups. However, our review also highlights the need for more transversal ways - i.e., reading across disciplinary silos and multiple intersecting social identities - to interrogate the impacts of systemic oppression on energy issues. We argue that such a transversal approach to energy studies should prioritize engendering an epistemic community that promotes a relational awareness of historic and contemporary structures of oppression, facilitate innovative methodological approaches to research, and speak to more radical societal visions through mobilization and activism.