{"id":14834,"date":"2012-09-05T10:37:22","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T16:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=14834"},"modified":"2012-09-05T10:37:22","modified_gmt":"2012-09-05T16:37:22","slug":"appropriate-technology-womens-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/appropriate-technology-womens-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Appropriate Technology: Liberating Women from "Women's Work""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"women<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor’s note:<\/strong> This post is sustainablog’s contribution to Important Media’s focus on women this week<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Women’s work” – there’s a phrase that (thankfully) we don’t hear much any more. Feminisms get much of the credit for relegating such language (as well as the cultural assumptions that accompanied them) to the historical dustbin. Gloria Steinham and H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous certainly deserve credit, but technology played a role here, too: devices for the home ranging from washing machines to microwave ovens cut the amount of labor needed to accomplish tasks around the home… and gave women (who’d traditionally been saddled with such tasks) time to think, read, and consider their place in the world.<\/p>\n

Of course, that shift has largely taken place in the developed world: in poorer areas without access to electricity and other utilities, a division of labor is still necessary to ensure the tasks necessary for survival get accomplished… and that division still tends to fall along gender lines. So, while women in developed countries have choices about work, the developing world’s women are still gathering firewood, cooking meals, and doing laundry… all without the benefits of the labor-saving machines we take for granted.<\/p>\n

In this context, appropriate technology – devices that are “small-scale, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally controlled” – not only creates efficiency, but also liberation and empowerment for the developing world’s women. Consider the radical implications of some of the following creations:<\/p>\n

The Clean Cook Stove and other Cooking Technologies<\/h3>\n

Yes, I’m fascinated by cook stoves<\/a>, simply because they address so many environmental and social challenges in the developing world. As a tool of liberation, cook stoves free up time spent gathering wood, cooking it, and caring for family members made sick from indoor air pollution. The video below (which I’ve shared before<\/a>) provides some insight into just how much time a clean cook stove frees up for women who must cook over fires<\/p>\n