Murder Through Inaction
A recent CNN article outlined the health threats of using open fires for cooking and heating. Initially, such an article would seem to focus on the danger of fire itself, but this article took a different approach. “When cooking can be deadly” by David Lindsay brought to attention the effects of smoke from these fires: lung disease, cancer, pneumonia, and heart disease. Since about half the global population (about 3 billion) relies on open fire, this constitutes a major problem.1
Lindsay’s article lists a World Health Organization statistic of 2 million premature deaths per year caused by indoor pollution from open fire cookstoves. Two million feels like a large number—because it is. But what this WHO statistic does not speak to is most of these deaths are women and children.
In Tanzania, where Lindsay’s article focuses, women do much household work like farming for the family and childrearing.2 With this information, it is not a large jump to assume that women also do other work traditionally associated with the private sphere. Namely: cooking. (This can also be assumed from Lindsay’s article, which interviewed only women about cookstove problems.) If women are the ones spending time around dangerous smoke, they will be the ones whose health is affected. Since women are also in childrearing roles, it can be assumed that children will be close by these fires along with their mothers. Thus, children are also largely affected by the pollution dangers.
Further statistics about indoor pollution found on the WHO’s website give specific mortality rates for children under 5, but no specific gendered statistics.3 Why?
The way the WHO’s statistics are listed hides the gendered aspect to the problem of cookstove pollution. However, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves seems to be attempting to bring some light to the gendered aspect of indoor cookstove pollution. The organization’s homepage acknowledges women and children to be most affected by harmful smoke.4 Interesting since WHO is a United Nations organization and Global Alliance is funded through the United Nations Foundation. Why is there not recognition of gendered aspects across the board?
A company in Tanzania has begun locally producing clean, safe cookstoves to reduce cooking dangers, but these stoves are expensive for poor, rural women.5 With WHO estimating cookstove smoke to be in the top five health hazards in poor countries, why is more not being done to reduce this hazard?6 The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is involved in researching the problem and raising awareness, which is well and good, but all the awareness in the world will not do a thing for material reality.
Dangerous cookstove smoke is literally killing women around the world. To my knowledge, no feminist organizations have taken this cause to heart. Why? What are we waiting for? How many more women must die when the problem very clearly has a solution?
When women are brutally murdered we speak up. Cookstove deaths are slower and less dramatic, but when they are 100% preventable, are we murdering women by our inaction?
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- David Lindsay, “When cooking can be deadly,” CNN International, February 7 2012, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/07/world/africa/tanzania-stoves/.
- “Gender,” Tanzania National Website, February 7 2012, http://www.tanzania.go.tz/gender.html.
- World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory Data Repository, World Health Organization, 2011, http://apps.who.int/ghodata/?vid=34000.
- Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, homepage, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, 2012, http://cleancookstoves.org/.
- David Lindsay, “When cooking can be deadly,” CNN International, February 7 2012, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/07/world/africa/tanzania-stoves/.
- Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, homepage, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, 2012, http://cleancookstoves.org/.
- ibid.
