[Stoves] Women's empowerment

[Nikhil Desai]

Xavier:

Please avoid the single-mindedness of activists of one solution.

I happen to know that even within a family, one daughter may be subjected
to more kitchen chores - cooking and cleaning up - than another and may
thus fall behind in educational achievement.

So it is not contraceptives and abortion options versus education versus
cleaner fuels. There is a market for all, and some are easier to capture
with external donor finance, some not.

Contexts determine priorities for governments in terms of spending money,
after all tax-payers' money, of their own countries or of other countries.
Even Gates Foundation is partly financed by the tax-payer (via tax
exemptions).

I reiterate - the challenge for biomass stoves community is to get the
"service standard" and "objectives" right, and do so as tailored to
contexts. Only by doing so they would answer Kirk Smith's challenge -
demonstrating implementation capacity.

Lots of money is needed for that.

Nikhil

PS: Rachel Kyte was referring to a recent report that I have not yet posted
or written about. The billions aren't going to come from the LPG industry
or its favorite advocates.



On Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 7:13 PM, Xavier Brandao <xav.brandao at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Samer is making excellent points here.
>
>
>
> I believe in the huge positive impact improved cookstoves can have,
> otherwise I wouldn’t have dedicated such an important part of my life and
> so many efforts. But obviously, a lot of claims are being made, and we need
> much more data.
>
>
>
> « As Nikhil suggests, contraceptives are revolutionary in that they give
> women (and households) tremendous choice and control with little effort. »
>
> Amen to that. There are studies, by the Guttmacher Institute and Bill
> Gates Foundation, saying that access and use of contraception is one of the
> best drivers of change, and best return on investment.
>
> And this, is empowerment. Giving a women or a girl the choice to decide if
> and when she wants to give birth, and how she wants to live her life.
> Giving her access and allowing her to use contraceptives as well as
> abortion. Not having the husband, the mother-in-law, nor the society decide
> for her.
>
>
>
> And, this is not that costly. Rachel Kyte was talking about billions of
> dollars for the improved cookstoves sector, maybe these billions should
> flow to family planning and girls education instead.
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Xavier
>
>
>
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