[Stoves] Women's empowerment

[Xavier Brandao]

Dear Nikhil,

 

Of course, I didn’t recommend and will never recommend to put all eggs in one basket.

Development issues are all interconnected, and we must invest and put efforts in all solutions at once, to make real societal changes. Improved cookstoves are still much needed.

 

I’m just saying we should, once in a while, zoom out, and strategize. We are development professionals, not only stovers. We (and the GACC) are (among other reasons) making stoves because (we think) they empower women. But, just like Samer did, we have to come back to the very definition of empowerment. And also examine if there are better ways to empower women.

 

« some are easier to capture with external donor finance, some not. »

Yes, that’s true. We don’t talk nearly enough about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SHRH). They are overlooked, compared to other issues, like clean energy. One dollar put in family planning, girls education, women rights can yield big returns, possibly bigger than in clean energy.

I think SHRH should be given a much bigger piece of the global aid cake.

 

Best,


Xavier

 

 

 

 

 

 

De : Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com] 
Envoyé : samedi 7 octobre 2017 02:49
À : Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
Cc : Ronal W. Larson; Crispin Pemberton-Pigott; Xavier Brandao; Samer Abdelnour
Objet : Re: [Stoves] Women's empowerment

 

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

  

 



---
L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel antivirus Avast.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20171007/fc46e506/attachment.html>