Despite Efforts for Change, Bangladeshi Women Prefer to Use Pollution-Causing Cookstoves
Women in rural Bangladesh prefer inexpensive, traditional stoves for cooking over modern ones — despite significant health risks, according to a Yale study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A large majority of respondents (94%) believed that indoor smoke from the traditional stoves is harmful. Still, Bangladeshi women opted for traditional cookstove technology so they could afford basic needs.
“Non-traditional cookstoves might be more successful if they were designed with features valued more highly by users, such as reducing operating costs even if they might not reduce environmental impact,” said Mushfiq Mobarak, a co-author and associate professor of economics at the Yale School of Management. (more…)