Poverty and gender equality
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Women and work at home Traditionally, it has been women who look after the family and home in terms of domestic work such as cleaning and cooking as well as caring for the older and younger members. Besides these tasks, in many rural areas, women and girls are responsible for collecting water and firewood for household use. This affects them in many ways: there is less time for education and income-earning activities, rest and community affairs they are too tired to concentrate at school or work in the fields heavy buckets cause injuries and stress to weak bodies they are fearful of being attacked. As populations increase, local fuel supplies get used up and so they have to travel further, which may double the time they have to spend collecting wood. These are time consuming daily chores. If electricity could be supplied to homes the impact on women’s lives would be huge. It would mean there would be: pumps to access clean, underground water nearby power for cooking, heating and lighting power for craft making and other income-earning activities to pay for the supply less smoke and fumes in the dwelling and so less respiratory problems radios and the internet for information and learning. Women rarely take part in decisions on these matters which are of major concern to them but not seen as important by men. According to WHO, ‘smoke rising from stoves and fires inside homes is associated with around 1.6 million deaths per year in developing countries – that’s one life lost every 20 seconds to the killer in the kitchen’. Figure 3.2 shows a cooking fire made from dung and wood in a poorly ventilated home. By 2020, a UN project plans to put 100 million clean cooking stoves into homes in developing countries.
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Figure 3.2
The killer in the kitchen
1. Explain why ‘the killer in the kitchen’ affects women and children more than men. 2. How could providing electricity in the home help to empower women?