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The Gender of Fuelwood: Headloads and Truckloads in India

Author

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  • Meena Khandelwal
  • Matthew E. Hill Jr.
  • Margaret Beck
  • Sanoop Valappanandi
  • Hrushikesh Mahapatra

Abstract

Cookstove improvement projects in India have emerged from the longstanding concerns about the nexus of cooking, fuelwood, gender and the environment. Such work, both academic and interventionist, focuses on rural women hauling headloads of firewood from the forests to their kitchens, where they burn it for daily cooking in a mud cookstove [ chulha ]. We argue that this focus on village women’s cooking is too narrow if we are to understand and address problems caused by burning fuelwood in India, as cookstove campaigns attend to villages and not cities, domestic cooking and not commercial uses, and women and not men. Ethnographic research in Rajasthan and Odisha shows why we must expand our understanding of fuelwood use beyond villages, rural kitchens and women, and how cookstove interventions, often expressed as concern for women, require gender analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Meena Khandelwal & Matthew E. Hill Jr. & Margaret Beck & Sanoop Valappanandi & Hrushikesh Mahapatra, 2022. "The Gender of Fuelwood: Headloads and Truckloads in India," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 17(2), pages 230-259, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:soudev:v:17:y:2022:i:2:p:230-259
    DOI: 10.1177/09731741221078170
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Meena R. Khandelwal, 2025. "Politics of domestic technologies: How can US-based feminist STS research illuminate cookstove improvement in India?," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 27(1), pages 41-56, August.

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