Bright Potential for Women's Empowerment

June 23, 2010 · 1 comment

Several years ago, I became intrigued by the transformative potential of small-scale solar devices to improve life for the nearly 2 billion people who live without regular energy access. Take solar cookers: today, hundreds of millions of people, mostly women, prepare meals over open flames. This often requires foraging for firewood, leading to destructive deforestation and exposing women to danger, particularly sexual violence, as they are forced to search for kindling farther from home. Open fires and traditional cookstoves also generate black soot, a leading cause of the respiratory illnesses that amount to a pandemic in much of the developing world. Two million people each year die from smoke inhalation from traditional cooking fires–more than die from malaria. The widespread adoption of solar cookers could dramatically improve global health, women’s safety, and the environment.

Over time, I have come to recognize that the benefits of new technologies for the world’s poorest also extend far beyond health, safety, and environment ones. Indeed, the greatest benefit of low-cost, innovative technologies could be in addressing the time deficit afflicting those living at the bottom of the pyramid, especially women and girls. Millions of girls, for example, spend long hours every day collecting firewood and water, but with a solar cooker or a solar-powered water pump, they can instead spend those hours going to school. New, cost-effective technologies such as solar cookers, solar lanterns, and solar water filtration systems are in some ways the twenty-first-century equivalent of the 1950s washing machine for American women: time-saving devices that allow girls and women in developing countries to shift their energies to more productive activities.

Read More – Huffington Post

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Yogi June 24, 2010 at 2:21 pm

I agree with your thoughts on this. Many developing countries can definitely utilize the solar energy…but the challenge would be making the solar cookers available in the numbers it would require to make this a possibility, which is definitely possible with involvement of government and the other organisations…a thought provoking post…thank you

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