[Stoves] another thought on Women's empowerment

[Lange]

The way to tell if someone is empowered is to see if they have more power.   

then what is power?    power is the capacity to get things done that you want done, and to have the freedom to be able to think practically about what you want.

We find, as all organizers do, that power of women comes when they get organized in new ways to do things together.  It is not usually an individual characteristic.

I feel we are empowering women when we help them awaken that part of themselves that says, "oh my!!!, things really don't have to be just like they are.  And our normal lives can include rewarding work together to make things different.  and when our normal lives include working together to make things better, life is better, more interesting, and more satisfying, even if we don't achieve everything we set out to do."

power is sometimes strongly linked to access to money.   and access to money is often linked to education level even if the education is not very good.  so money and education can be needed for power in some situations.    but power is about the capacity to do things.

bob lange
Maasai Stoves and Solar
the ICSEE




-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Heggie <aj.heggie at gmail.com>
To: Nikhil Desai <ndesai at alum.mit.edu>; Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Sat, Oct 7, 2017 6:35 am
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Women's empowerment

On 7 October 2017 at 01:48, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I hesitate to contribute to this thread as another male, why no ladies
contributing?

Nikhil it's not one solution, it's more that one improvement leads to
another e,g. if the family has more wealth then all daughters can be
educated, wealthier educated women then are in a position to make a
choice on family size. Local economy having input from all of its
collective intelligence instead of half is a massive positive
feedback.

Look at the work of the late Hans Rosling to see how it's wealth that
drives education and smaller families. Trouble is there is probably
not enough resources left available to poorer communities if they have
to pull themselves up by their bootlaces.

Andrew

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