Making cooking environments safer for rural women in India
By Nitisha Agrawal, Director, Social Impact, MicroEnergy Credits
20th August 2024
As per a recent report - ‘The scorching divide: How extreme heat inflames gender inequalities in health and income’ published by The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation[i] In India, the number of women dying annually due to heat is projected to double, reaching 73,500 by 2050. While the report does not point specifically to the drudgery faced by women due to rudimentary cooking practices using fire food and biomass, much has been said about the uncomfortable, almost unbearable cooking conditions these practices create.
The report points out that presently, 27,000 women in India die each year due to heat-related excess mortality. While the women are exposed to extreme heat for all outdoor activities including paid and unpaid labour, cooking through traditional stoves further exacerbates their exposure to heat.
Several factors add to what could be termed as heat-related issues from the lens of the cooking scenario - direct exposure to flames, intense smoke, and soot that stays in the cooking area long after the food is cooked, increased instances of skin burns, longer hours to collect firewood as one’s efficiency is at an all-time low, and longer hours to fetch water due to drying water sources are among the obvious factors.
That extreme heat affects physical and mental health is a known fact, and the report highlights that “February 2023 was India's hottest February since 1901, and July 2023 broke records as the hottest July on Earth. Women are vulnerable to extreme heat due to physiological differences, limited access to healthcare, and increased risk of gender-based violence.”
However, the good news is that several new technologies and innovations could well have the solution to help reduce the heat factor in these women's cooking areas. Induction-based cooking is surely one of the most efficient and promising ways forward.
Based on my recent experience with MicroEnergy Credits, I had a chance to meet almost 25 women who have been using induction-based cookstoves for most of their cooking requirements. We met these women in their homes between March and April. Based on temperature records, some of those days had been recorded as the hottest days (29th April, Nalanda district of Bihar recorded well over 40 degrees daytime temperature in some parts).
The one differentiating factor that stood out immediately was that their cooking space did not feel as hot as compared to homes using traditional cooking methods. The absence of smoke and flame-related heat made their cooking environment bearable and comfortable. Most of these women shared that they find cooking on induction stoves convenient and easy. As opposed to traditional cooking methods using biomass, not being exposed to smoke and flame-related heat can prevent them from direct health issues like extreme exhaustion, giddiness, headache, respiratory illness, and heat-related fever.
MEC through its field partner network has been instrumental in bringing these induction cookstoves to over 1,30,000 households in the first year of its program which is a stupendous achievement given the largeness of this problem statement.
As the grid infrastructure and power connectivity continue to improve across the villages in India, induction-based cooking can play a pivotal role in preventing several issues related to rudimentary cooking practices including the health and well-being of women.
MEC is committed to strengthening the user experience through its partners and helping reduce barriers to adopting these new and improved technologies like induction-based cooking.
[i] https://onebillionresilient.org/extreme-heat-inflames-gender-inequalities/
