Written by
Thomas Clapper
Thomas Clapper
Category
Design
Aug
23

Invisible Women’s Innovative Stove Design Story

‍Designing with women in mind

In Pérez’s book, Invisible Women, she argues that the world has been primarily designed for male – that male has been the default. Yet, in many ways, her book is vastly about the design of everyday things that neglects ½ the population. This can be everything from language to far more severe consequences – even deadly.

‍

A collection of improved biomass stoves. Source: Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves


Deadly consequences of design

At the end of chapter 7, Pérez discusses the design of dirty stoves. A large portion of the world cooks on 3-stone stoves. These indoor stoves tend to omit harsh chemicals that can be equated to smoking 1000 cigarettes per hour. Teams have designed many high-efficiency stove options to solve this problem. Many of these have been endorsed by the likes of Hilary Clinton. This problem is large enough to gain the attention of philanthropists looking to improve the lives of so many people.


However, many of the high-efficiency stoves failed. Why? The stoves worked just fine, but the woman did not adopt them for various reasons. Some key adoption hurdles:


  • Cost
  • Maintenance
  • Fitting fuel sources
  • Cooking speed (too fast)
  • Lack of buy-in from the spouse


When researchers went back to check on the status of the high-efficiency stoves at these residences, many found the stoves in the corner of the room collecting dust.


So what was the real problem?

‍

MA devices – Source Greenit


Designing for real end-users

The researchers that had designed the high-efficiency stoves did not understand their end-users – women. There were simple issues like the stoves were designed to take wood that had been split and chopped. However, this was a challenge for the women doing the cooking. Their 3-stone stove could take any size of fuel – the high-efficiency stove didn’t meet their needs.


Then a team of researchers looked at the adoption rate of the high-efficiency stoves and wondered why the rate was so low. In interviewing the individuals, they understood the women’s challenges – they invited women into the design.


The solution? A small piece of bent meta inexpensively crafted from recycled metal. The Mewar Angithi (MA) device helps increase the efficiency of the traditional stove, reducing fuel consumption and smoke. The complexity of the high-efficiency stoves was no match to the simple solution that came from listening

‍