Technology in Context for Rural Bangladesh: The Options from an Improved Cooking Stove for Women

摘要

In a field study of a cluster of Bangladeshi villages, in which the application of renewable energy technologies was tested for contextual relevance, cooking was found to be the only activity where the transfer of a time-saving and drudgery-free technology offered practicable opportunities for major lifestyle improvements. Improved cooking stoves (ICS) was the most appropriate technology compared to other alternative technologies such as biogas, solar heaters, and briquetting in the socio-economic and climatic context of Bangladesh. This paper discusses a contextual mechanism through which ICS can provide time for rural Bangladeshi women from landless and marginal farmers' (LMFs) households. This time could be spent on income generation activities, an option enjoying considerable currency within women's responses during the study, without affecting their time allocated for other daily activities including resting hours. A study of women's daily activities implied that the replacement of an existing cooking stove by an ICS would release a time slot, of 1.5 hours a day, most suitably between 6:30 and 8:00pm. In this scenario, sunshine-dependent activities, such as clothes drying, paddy and fuel processing remain as daylight activities. Some evening activities would likely be rearranged to earlier periods, using the time flexibility provided through ICS. A mechanism is discussed that combines women's expressed preference for generating income, the skills available and the financial requirements of a technology transfer for domestic cooking and lighting. The women from LMFs' households have been found to be skilled in serving clothes and mat, pup rice making, and paddy par boiling. These women may use the saved time, and electricity from a rural cooperative, to generate income at night. We find this mechanism can be viable, where the income surplus is able to pay the electricity bill and repay the loan taken for ICS.