It is well known that women play an integral role in the procurement as well as use of cooking energy, particularly from biomass. Existing gender roles within households impose a differential burden on men and women, with women having to bear most of the adverse effects of time-consuming and unsafe sources of energy for cooking and lighting. While there is some research on the health effects of household air pollution caused by cooking with biomass, an issue which is relatively neglected is the “time-poverty” of women: “scarcity of discretionary time is referred to as time poverty.” (Kalenkoski and Hamrick, 2013) The time spent on collection and use of firewood act as a barrier for women to engage in meaningful production activities and further accentuates women’s income and energy poverty.

Fuel for cooking

In 2009-10, 76 per cent of rural households in India reported firewood and wood chips as their primary cooking fuel; this number was almost 86 per cent for Karnataka (NSSO, 2010). Non-availability and non-affordability of modern energy services were the common reasons for households relying on traditional cooking fuels (Reddy and Nathan, 2012). In 2012, 67 per cent of rural households in India used solid biomass as their primary cooking fuel and the proportion was 80 in Karnataka (NSSO, 2012). Although there has been a shift away from traditional fuels like firewood and dung cakes after 2009, even households that adopt cleaner cooking fuels do not completely switch over from traditional fuels but instead continue to stack them for use in certain situations.

Primary data from census-type village surveys conducted by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies in two villages of Karnataka (Alabujanahalli in Mandya district and Siresandra in Kolar) supports these statistics and provide more insight on stacking of fuels. In the 2009 village survey, 69 per cent of households in Alabujanahalli village reported firewood as the primary cooking fuel. The proportion in Siresandra village of Kolar was 96 per cent. However, nearly all households in both villages relied on firewood for some purpose, such as, heating water for bathing. In Alabujanahalli, 30 per cent of households relied only on firewood as their primary cooking fuel and 41 per cent stacked it with a kerosene stove. Only 18 per cent of the households stacked firewood along with LPG, and a very small percentage of households did not use firewood at all. On the other hand, in Siresandra, 50 per cent of households relied only on firewood for cooking whereas the other half stacked firewood along with other cooking fuels like kerosene, LPG and biogas.

In 2017, a resurvey of a small sample of women from the same villages (22 in Alabujanahalli and 14 in Siresandra) was conducted. The focus of the 2017 resurvey was a time use study of women and we thus have detailed data on time spent in cooking and related activities. In Alabujanahalli, only 10 per cent of women (and their families) depended on firewood as the primary cooking fuel, but firewood was commonly used for heating water. In Alabujanahalli, 17 out of 20 households stacked LPG and firewood, with LPG as the primary fuel for cooking and firewood as a secondary fuel. The remaining three households were entirely dependent on firewood for cooking and heating. In Siresandra, 5 out of 10 households stacked LPG along with firewood for cooking, one household relied entirely on firewood, and the rest used only LPG for cooking.

Firewood collection

In 2012, the National Sample survey found that 440 females out of every 1000 females in the age group of 15 to 59 in rural India were engaged in the collection of firewood. In Karnataka, 351 out of 1000 women were engaged in firewood collection activities. Of the women who were not engaged in primary production activities, around 700 out of 1000 were engaged in firewood collection activities (NSSO, 2012).

Findings from the two villages of Karnataka allow us to identify women’s involvement in collection of firewood, disaggregated by task (collection, bundling, storage and processing, axing, drying wood, etc.). There are caste and class differences visible here, especially in Siresandra village.

In Alabujanhalli, 63 per cent of the women who used firewood were engaged in some activity related to firewood collection – either axing logs of wood, bundling, collection, drying, or travelling for collection. Eighty per cent of the women engaged in firewood related activities were Scheduled Caste though only 41 per cent of all women surveyed were Scheduled Caste. Of the women involved in firewood collection, 50 per cent went to the field, while the rest were involved in drying firewood, storage and handling of firewood as part of household maintenance. Women who went to the field for collection mostly belonged to the class of manual workers, although some women from business and salaried and peasant classes also engaged in firewood collection.

In Siresandra (Kolar district), in all households where women reported using firewood for cooking, they were also engaged in firewood collection. Of the women engaged in firewood collection, 67 per cent went to the field for collection of firewood and with one exception they belonged to manual worker households. Peasant women did not go to collect firewood but were responsible for stocking, drying, and bundling firewood.

Time use

Data from the first round of time use survey, in September 2017, showed that of the 22 women surveyed in Alabujanahalli, time spent on firewood collection excluding travel ranged from 30 minutes to 3.5 hours per trip depending on the quantity of collection and its location. Time spent travelling to collect firewood ranged from 10 to 30 minutes per trip. Women who collected small quantities made multiple trips in a week. On average, women spent 60 minutes per trip on collection of firewood. One woman from a Manual Worker household who was completely dependent on firewood for cooking went to collect firewood for 4 days in the reference week; making around three trips daily and spending around 40 minutes per trip on an average. She also spent an additional 15 minutes on one day during the week in drying the wood and stocking it. She could not avoid this drudgery even though she was suffering from chikungunya during the survey. On average, the women surveyed in Alabujanahalli spent around 60 to 80 minutes per day on collection, travel for collection, and stocking and drying of firewood during the reference week.

Time taken to light firewood either for heating water or cooking ranged from 10 to 20 minutes (depending on the moisture in the firewood and the availability of kerosene). Time spent near the stove waiting for water to heat ranged from 10 to 30 minutes. This was a daily task for all the women. Time spent cooking with firewood ranged from 60 to 120 minutes per meal, with an average of 110 minutes per meal. It took, for example, 30 minutes to cook rice with firewood as fuel. Even in households with LPG, some women used firewood to cook ragi (finger millet) in order to save fuel. There is one other study conducted across six states in India that showed that women in rural India spent on average around 40 minutes on firewood collection and around 3 hours cooking on it (Barnes and Sen, 2002).^[1]

In both the villages, women who were entirely dependent on firewood for cooking belonged to the class of manual workers. Even with a small family size of three, these women spent two to three hours a day cooking. The time spent in cooking is clearly related to the inefficiency of the cooking fuel. If you consider energy conversion factors for various cooking fuels, firewood has a mere 15 per cent efficiency for cooking, whereas LPG and electricity have over 60 and 75 per cent respectively (World Bank, 2002).

It is clear that not only do many rural women spend a significant proportion (60 to 80 minutes on an average) of their day in collection of firewood and processing but they also spend an inordinate amount of time cooking with it (around 15 per cent of the day on an average). The time spent cooking with biomass exposes women to toxic household air pollutants making them vulnerable to chronic lung diseases, tuberculosis, asthma, and adverse pregnancy outcomes (Bloomfield, 2015). It is women from Scheduled Caste and manual worker households who are more dependent on firewood, spent more time in drudgerous tasks and are more exposed to pollutants than women from other castes and classes.

[1] This study was conducted across Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal in 2002 through a survey of sample households in villages in these respective states. It was not a time-use study.

References      

Barnes, D. F., & Sen, M. (2002), “Energy Strategies for Rural India: Evidence from Six States,” ESMAP, Washington DC, available at http://imagebank.worldbank.org/servlet/WDS_IBank_Servlet

Bloomfield, E. (2015), “Gender and livelihoods impacts of clean cookstoves in south Asia,” Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Washington DC, available at http://cleancookstoves.org/resources/357.html

Kalenkoski, C. M., Hamrick, K.S. (2012), “How Does Time Poverty Affect Behavior? A Look at Eating and Physical Activity,”Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Volume 35, Issue 1, 1 March 2013, Pages 89–105, https://doi.org/10.1093/aepp/pps034