[Stoves] Fuel and Forestry etc.

[Erin Rasmussen]

Samer, 

It's hard to explain to you in just how many ways that last email was
offensive to me, both as a stove promoter and someone very concerned about
improving the quality of life for women around the world. But I'm going to
set aside my outrage and tackle some points you raised. 

Let's talk about that stove study from India. We've already analyzed it to
death in this forum. Long story short, that India study rightly pointed out
that if you disseminate a stove that doesn't address the needs of the women
in the community that you are distributing stoves to, it will be abandoned.
The legitimate point from the study is to make sure that you understand the
needs of the community you are attempting to serve. 

It's a much more fair point to say that the community of people that use
stoves (not just women) is diverse, that they prefer stoves based on metrics
that are not obvious to those that are outside their community - but as
Christa and others have proven over and over and over again those needs can
be readily ascertained through careful cooperation with stove users.
Improved stoves are tricky bits of engineering and must be tailored to
address specific community needs. Often multiple stoves are needed. There
are farm scale and household scale needs tasks that often must be performed
by the same community members, and they may need a stove for each one.

 

This particular email discussion is more than 10 years old, and the
community of people working on these issues is a lot older.  We've seen a
lot of bad ideas come and go, and this particular meme (the rape meme) is
probably one of them. I'd like to stop that particular discussion right
here, and I'd like to encourage you, Samer, to go off and do your own
homework into women's issues as I don't have time to explain to you why your
email may have been offensive to the many women we have on this list.

 

Erin Rasmussen

erin at trmiles.com 

Computer wizard in charge of the software that runs the Biomass Stoves
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