Using improved cookstoves to reduce the burden of domestic work for rural women in Côte d’Ivoire

 

In Côte d’Ivoire, as in most sub-Saharan African countries, the responsibility for unpaid care work falls disproportionately on women and girls, leaving them less time for education, leisure and economic activities. Women typically spend more time cooking, collecting fuel and water, cleaning and caring for children, the ill and the elderly. Rural women are particularly affected by this reality due to the precarious conditions in which unpaid care is provided.

Some 87% of households still rely on firewood as the source of fuel for cooking. In addition to its ecological and environmental impact, the intensive use of firewood exposes women to smoke inhalation, with severe consequences for their health and physical wellbeing. A local initiative has distributed 20,000 improved cookstoves to replace wood-based cooking systems, benefiting over 100,000 people.

This project seeks to generate evidence to inform the scaling of clean-energy technology to reduce the time spent on unpaid care work (such as gathering of firewood) while empowering women and reducing households’ carbon footprint. It will provide evidence to inform policy implementation, disseminate research findings and explore public-private partnerships to scale up the technology.

This project is supported under the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa partnership co-funded by Global Affairs Canada and IDRC. Scaling Care Innovations is a five-year initiative aimed at scaling tested and locally grounded policy and program innovations to redress gender inequalities in unpaid care work in sub-Saharan Africa.