Clean Cooking and Social Position of Women

The pertinent question is that how can we energizing change clean cooking keeping in mind the aspects of the social position of women?

The main objective is to examine the fundamental questions:

• How do women can be involved in clean cooking?
• How its distribution can be benefited?
•  How does it bring economic autonomy to women?
• How does aid in changing the social position of women -- within the household and beyond?

India is undergoing a clean cooking revolution with the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a government initiative. 

The programme is laudable for its unique approach, design and implementation strategy and has succeeded in distributing more than 80 million subsidised liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connections to women from underprivileged households.

However, it has been noticed that PMUY has some limitations which affect the program due to affordability of refills and behavioural patterns in cooking choices and issues with supply chain and access.

Clean cookstoves present opportunities for women to be gainfully employed as entrepreneurs and providers of energy supply and services, with this logic and a mission, a technological intervention [TIDE] Technology Informatics and Design Endeavour would help address social issues.

The main purpose of the program is to provide clean cooking technology and capacity building to rural women. Generally, women are engaged through entrepreneurial-based empowerment training to take up responsibilities as cookstove builders, thus opening livelihood opportunities for them.

TIDE’s comprehensive plan is to create green social entrepreneurship that provided alternate economic opportunities to women, and created space for environmental and health awareness, actuating improvements in women’s social position.

Increasing women’s engagement in the energy business model may have additional benefits for the family and community. It is estimated that women reinvest nearly 90% of their income back into their families education, health and nutrition as compared with 35% for men.

Over the years, several clean cooking programmes have been launched globally and in India:

• 1970 - LPG deployment
• 1981- National Biogas and Manure Management Programme
• 1986- National Programme on Improved Cookstoves
• 2014 - Supply of Piped Natural Gas
• 2014 - Unnat Chulha Abhiyan
• 2017 - Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana

TIDE also recognised the urgency of switching to clean cooking and came up with own smokeless cookstove design, known as the Sarala stove, in 2002.

TIDE’s activities are mostly focused on the Indian state of Karnataka, which is one of the most prosperous states of India and was ranked second in terms of per capita income in the year 2017–2018 (Government of Karnataka, 2019).

Most scholarly work on women’s entrepreneurship in the cooking domain has emphasized that with education, training and investment, women can build businesses or be employed in the design, production, marketing, sale and maintenance sectors of new energy technologies and services.

Even government programmes and schemes have also been launched to provide equal opportunities for women.  These programmes are specially devised towards empowering the women of India.  Some of them are:

• Beti Bachao Beti Padhao
• Mahila-eHaat
• Mahila Shakti Kendra
• Support to Training and Employment Programme for Women (STEP)

In addition, specialised schemes have been formulated for the economic upliftment of women belonging to lower or backward castes.  Such as:

The New Swarnima loan scheme and the Mahila Samriddhi Yojana for SC and OBC women by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment

Scheme for strengthening education among ST girls in low literacy districts by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, specific provisions under the Mahila Coir Yojana of the Coir Board

There are among many schemes targeting women of SC/ST/OBC communities.

To change the social position of women a focus group discussions (FGDs) is being considered, proven to be effective and appropriate in understanding the views of women FGDs is conducted with one group of men and women from each village to understand gender perceptions better and to avoid the influence of perception of one on the other.

A study conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), assess the efforts to incorporate women into the value chain, specifically in the clean energy sector.

Awareness campaigns are conducted in the villages to educate the community about the need to transition from polluting to clean cooking technologies.  The main target is to shift from “smokeless stoves” to “Smokeless Village.”

It has been suggested that women can play a critical role in the promotion, sale and adoption of improved cookstoves due to their roles and experience as primary cooks in the household.  In-depth training has been done so that there is a substantial increase in women’s capacity and willingness to identify and pursue economic opportunities and build strong entrepreneur skills.

It is going with the belief that “household energy is a woman’s concern” and take up cookstove building as an income-generating opportunity.  The programme proved to be effective in creating additional livelihood opportunities for successful women stove builders, who were otherwise constrained by insufficient income and the seasonal nature of agriculture.  This transition is a boost for the social position of women.

It has been evident that casteism is there and as they are allowed only to enter kitchens and build stoves for members of their own caste and not others.  But the changes have taken place now with the in-depth training bring changes through women’s entrepreneurship and subsequent empowerment through designing market and policy initiatives, which give women from all background an opportunity to become entrepreneurs, neutralising the influence of repressive caste-based norms.

It is still existing that appropriate social behaviour for women is always decided by men, and women are just expected to be obedient and submissive.  Thus, their ability to make choices, achieve their goals, will certainly be limited to exercise their newly acquired empowerment through entrepreneurship.

It is imperative that more opportunities need to be created for women in all quarters to bring about structural changes in their social position.  One should understand the women’s ability to become energy entrepreneurs and should effectively address the urgency of transitioning to clean energy and empowerment of women at the same time.

There should be a ‘code of conduct’ in case of disrespect of a woman.  No doubt, in societies we are characterised by distributed caste practices and gender prejudices but that does not mean that the noble goal of creating women entrepreneurs should not be abandoned.  As, we know gender norms are not static nor social structures, but a shifting complex of social relationships is eternal.