Success Stories

Less hardship for women

SUNSARI—Manita Chaudhary sits comfortably in her house waiting for her children to return from school as she has already finished all her work before noon.

Her life was quite different a few months ago. She had to wake up very early to reach the forest on time to fetch wood for house fuel, sit five hours in the kitchen cooking and then spend additional four hours to clean up huge heap of cow dung in her house compound.

“There is no more hardship like before,” says Chaudhary, explaining how her life has changed ever since she installed her own biogas plant.

Although she had a small land, it was quite enough to build a tank to fill up with 50 kg of cow dung. It took barely a few weeks to build up her biogas plant and a new kitchen with guidance from Biogas Sector Partnership-Nepal (BSP-Nepal).

BSP-Nepal helped to provide a subsidy of Rs 6,500 from Biogas Support Programme (BSP), currently funded by Dutch, German and Nepal governments through Dutch development organization SNV, German Development Bank KfW and Nepal government organization Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC).

“This technology has helped to change the lives of women. I have personally reaped so many benefits as a woman,” explains Chaudhary, who has been encouraging her female neighbors in Khanar Village Development Committee (VDC) to build their plants so that they can also benefit in many ways, especially in reducing their drudgery.

Chaudhary’s change in her lifestyle has been inspiring other female villagers, who also want to have their own plants and are now requesting the local biogas companies for help.

She no longer has to worry about fetching wood and spends less than an hour in her kitchen cooking food, as it is quicker on her biogas stove. There is also no need to clean the cow dung since all of it is used completely to fill the tank. Most importantly, she and her children do not have to inhale any smoke from the fuel wood filling up in her kitchen.

“Biogas has really helped to raise more awareness about the drudgery that we women went through. Now, we often talk about how to improve its use,” explains Chaudhary. Over the last several months, she has learnt so much about biogas technology and its benefits. She also leads her local gobar gas users group, consisting of mostly women, and teaches them on how to get loans, fund assistance and making best use of biogas to improve their own lives.

“Now we don’t have to worry about waking early in the morning or walking for hours to find wood to store for months,” explains her neighbour Sharmila Chaudhary. She explained that many women were the ones enduring the most hardship, as they had to make dry dung for fuel when they ran out of wood.

Reducing hours of drudgery

Studies have shown that biogas technology has played a significant role in making a difference in gender sector. In a country where 95 percent of the rural population burns traditional biomass fuels indoors for cooking, heating and light, it is the female populace who spend most of their time in the smoke-filled kitchen for hours. The current trend of cooking through the use of fuel wood could have a direct chronic impact on the health of the women and children.

To a larger extent, biogas programme has helped to reduce the health risk especially in relation to reducing indoor pollution with tens and thousands of household shifting to biogas from biomass.

“Our long term goal has always been to also improve hygiene and health of the rural population, especially the women,” says Saroj Rai, executive director of BSP-Nepal.

There are of course criticisms also that the biogas technology has not altogether reduced the work burden of the women, since they continue to do more work than their male counterparts in maintaining the biogas plants. Women are the ones who carry the cow dung to fill in the tanks. In addition, they still have to carry water, which is needed to process the gobar gas. In places where water is scarce, the women and girls still have to walk a long way and could consume a lot of their time.

“We are aware of these issues and this is the reason why we are spreading gender equality issues through our biogas user groups,” said Manita. She explained that in her village, the local men and women share their work equally to ensure that neither the male or female members are burdened with work. The local biogas users groups have already increased huge membership with an equal number of men and women.

According to BSP, every plant reduces the workload of women by nearly three hours everyday in each household. Over the last 15 years, BSP has reached 172,505 households in 2,675 VDCs of 67 districts. Although there is no accurate data on the number of female populace benefiting from the programme, it can be easily gauged how it has directly affected a large number of them.

“Surely, my wife already works less than before but now I am also getting more involved in household work,” explains Kesablal Chaudhary, who carries the cow dung in his wooden basket. The best part is that he does not see his wife coughing so much and rubbing her eyes like she did when they didn’t own a biogas plant.

Definitely, the gender aspect of the biogas programme has turned out to be one of its best achievements. The noticeable difference can be gauged even now if one goes to the villagers who own the biogas plants.

With BSP aiming to reach more households in Nepal’s rural areas, biogas technology would certainly prove to be one of the most effective gender development programmes by helping to reduce the household burden on women. “We could have the chance to use our saved time for education, income generation and leisure activities,” says Chaudhary.

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