Women, Energy, and Health: a Perspective From Where the People Are

Abstract

Energy analysis has tended to focus on the magnitude and variation of fuel flows, thus emphasizing oil and other modem fuels which dominate world energy use by energy content and economic value. It is useful. however. to invert this perspective by examining ener¡y -not according to where the energy is -but according to where the people are. A significantly different worldview is thus revealed.Women and children make up three-quarters of the world's population (WWSF 1993). Of these, some 80% are in developing countries. These 2.5 billion people are directly responsible for the most important fuel flows to this segment of the world's population, since household energy use dominates total energy demand for most of the developing-country population. This is because women and children do most of the household fuel collecting and essentially all of the cooking. In addition, as it has been since the mastery of fire, most of the energy used by these people is in the form of unprocessed solid household fuels. These include coal but are still mostly wood, crop residues, and animal-dung -all forms of biomass.Thus, from the perspective of most people today, the energy picture is not dominated by oil tankers, electric power plants, and the other modem energy facilities that engage the largest energy and financial flows, but by local biomass gathering for household cooking.