Considering the Qualitative Impacts of Safe-Stove Programs : Lessons from the Western Highlands of Guatemala

In 2016, 2.6 million people died prematurely from indoor air pollution as a result of the inefficient burning of biomass fuels for cooking and energy in the global south. The health and environmental impacts of indoor air pollution have been well documented throughout decades of literature, and governments and nongovernmental organizations alike have taken steps to implement “safe stove” programs to upgrade cookstoves in developing regions and begin to address these issues. While largely effective in reducing indoor air pollution and improving energy efficiency, the qualitative impacts of implementing safe stove programs have not yet been explored. This article aims to fill a gap in this literature by investigating why safe stoves are important to the women who participate in the projects, and what the qualitative impacts of combatting indoor air pollution are for communities as a whole. The research draws on in-depth interviews with women from the rural highlands of Guatemala in the Quetzaltenango region, and addresses topics such as dignity and self-esteem within these populations. Not intended to be a binding pieced of literature, this research serves as a good reminder that the focus of development initiatives should always be on improving the overall wellbeing of the participants who purportedly benefit from these projects.


Introduction
Around the world, indoor air pollution deriving from primitive cookstoves and open fires has increasingly become a point of focus among the development community.According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, between 60 and 90 percent of residents in developing countries rely on biomass fuels for household activities, contributing to about 1.6 million premature deaths a year 1 .Because of this, global development programs have worked to improve domestic cookstoves in order to mitigate the impacts of indoor and outdoor air pollution, reduce disease, and slow deforestation in developing regions.In recent decades, an increasing amount of literature has been dedicated to this problem, but virtually all studies have focused exclusively on the health and environmental aspects of improving cookstoves.This study, using primary data collected in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, aims to fill a gap in this literature by Due to global gender disparities which will be discussed in the following section, women and girls of all ages are disproportionately impacted by these risks.Safe-stove programs have been used globally to try and mitigate some of these impacts.

Gender
Following the 2006 study, Who Suffers from Indoor Air Pollution?Evidence from Bangladesh, researchers found the determinants of exposure to indoor air pollution (IAP) to include fuel type, time spent cooking, cooking location, structural characteristics of the home, and ventilation practices, with an individual's level of exposure to pollution exposure varying significantly depending on how much time is spent in the cooking area 8 .After examining the health impacts of cookstoves in Bangladesh, the researchers found that a gender-based divergence in exposure to pollution occurs among adults, with Bangladeshi women's exposure between the ages of 20 and 60 to be twice that of their male counterparts 9 .These findings are further supported by a 2002 World Bank study, which found that: Whereas women, in their traditional capacity as cooks, suffer from much greater average daily exposures than other family members, adult men experience the least exposure.Among non-cooks, those who are most vulnerable to the health risks of indoor air pollution -young children and elderly people -tend to experience higher levels of exposure because they spend more time indoors 10 .
Overall, within homes which rely on open-fire and primitive stoves, women will experience twice the amount of exposure to indoor air pollution, with these effects increasing within less-educated households 11 .
Within the context of Guatemala, gender dynamics contribute to an increased amount of time spent in the cooking area by women and girls.Traditional gender roles run deep in Guatemala, and Guatemalan women and girls, especially those living in rural communities, disproportionately engage in domestic tasks compared to their male counterparts 12 .Across Latin America, women are responsible for two-thirds of unpaid household work, with estimates from 2000 totaling the value of unpaid work contributed by women and girls in Guatemala to be between 25.7 and 34.2 percent of the country's gross domestic product 13 .According to a 1995 study of gender dynamics in rural Guatemala, researchers found that: [A] woman's primary obligation is to domestic labour.After fulfilling this primary obligation, either with her own labour or that of her daughter's, she can divide her remaining time between income generation for herself and/or for her husband, depending in large part on the opportunities available for her community14 .This entrenchment of traditional gender responsibilities contributes to women performing the majority of unpaid labour throughout Guatemala and Latin America, increasing their time spent in cooking areas, and consequently their exposure to indoor air pollution.While some progress has been made in Guatemala to include more women in the formalized workforce since the referenced 1995 study was undertaken, indigenous women have been largely excluded from this transition and continue today to perform the majority of unpaid household labour 15 .

Health
The majority of literature concerning safe-stove programs and the need to improve traditional cook-stoves focuses on the impact indoor air pollutants have on individual health.Kitchens with traditional cookstoves have indoor air pollution levels above the US Environmental Protection Agency's restrictions, which leads to a host of issues including, but not limited to: respiratory infections and disease, cardiopulmonary issues, low birthweight in infants, skin and eye irritations, and so on.While often overlooked, indoor air pollution is a leading cause of death around the world, with 2016 World Health Organization estimates in the range of 3.8 million premature deaths per year 16 .Globally, acute lower respiratory infection is the leading cause of death in children, with the most fatal cases occurring as pneumonia in children under five in developing countries 17 .Given their exposure to these toxins, women and children are disproportionately affected by the health impacts of indoor air pollution.
On a day-to-day level, indoor air pollution from traditional stoves contributes to eye problems, difficulty breathing, cough and cold, headaches, asthma, and skin boils18 .In the long term, indoor air pollution inhibits lung development in children, and causes pneumonia, chronic respiratory disease, heart disease, and low birth weight 19 .These health impacts serve as some of the major drivers behind safe-stove initiatives around the world, especially in India and China, where national safe-stove programs have been implemented to try and mitigate the health impacts of indoor air pollution 2021 .
A host of studies have found improved cookstoves to be effective in reducing indoor air pollution.In particular, one 2010 study, which installed 351 cookstoves in rural Guatemala, found an overall reduction of respiratory issues of 48.6 percent in women, and 63.3 percent in children.Further, the number of days spent coughing were reduced from 2.19 over a 21-day period to 1.42, and the probability of experiencing chronic coughing over a 21-day period was cut in half for women and girls 22 .
While it is often difficult to measure the exact amount of harmful toxins in a home, either due to lack of resources or lack of expertise, all major studies in the field indicate that the introduction of improved cookstoves in homes significantly reduces the number of toxic pollutants inhaled daily.

Environment
While considerable attention has been paid within academic studies to the health impacts of IAP, there has also been significant attention paid to the effects that reduced fuel consumption has on deforestation and the environment.Around the world, developing and developed countries are experiencing massive deforestation, with the World Health Organization estimating the tropical forest depletion rate to be about 5.8 million hectares per year 23 .Deforestation occurs for a number of reasons, including growing populations, land-hungry farmers, logging, and the energy needs of rural households 24 .Because of this, governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations are under pressure to find ways to curb deforestation in developing regions.For many, these answers come in the form of improved cookstoves in rural areas.
Improved cookstoves allow for higher internal temperatures in the combustion chamber, which reduces the amount of firewood needed.With fire-clay combustion chambers, the flow of oxygen is maximized, and the firewood is burned at temperatures exceeding 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit 25 .These temperatures allow the stoves to combust oil vapour from the wood, which would normally disappear up the chimney, further reducing wood consumption; as a consequence, wood consumption is decreased by 59.1 per cent 26 .While the efficiency of cookstoves vary dramatically based on design, nearly all studies indicate a significant decrease in energy needs with the improved cookstoves, translating into decreased deforestation levels in developing regions.
In a 2007 study conducted by Andrew K. Jorgenson and Thomas J. Burns, the researchers found landless farmers and rural populations to be one of the driving forces behind deforestation in the developing world.While industrial practices and large-scale farming contribute a significant amount to deforestation, a noteworthy percentage is attributable to slash-and-burn agriculture, over-harvesting, and the conversion of forests to pasture in rural communities 27 .Further, owing to land-rights issues and climate change, farmers are often forced to move multiple times in order to find arable lands 28 .Under these circumstances, land is cleared and soil is depleted, before the regions are abandoned by locals who are forced to move from one place to another in a continued search for arable lands.This phenomenon is well known in rural Guatemala, where local Mayan communities have been systematically displaced since the advent of Spanish colonization from healthy, arable lands to arid, steep hillsides, which makes farming and agriculture exceptionally difficult 29 .
Population growth, slash-and-burn agriculture, and land-rights issues are some of the most serious contributors to deforestation in Guatemala, with population growth and subsistence agriculture posing an existential risk to local tropical forests 30 .Within the departments of El Petén, Alta Verapez, and Izabel, deforestation rates between 1986 and 2006 were 17.7 per cent in the region of Sierra Yalijux, and 10.4 per cent in the region of Sierra Sacranix 31 .For cookstove improvement programs, these findings are significant, as local communities will often deforest moderately sloped hills for agriculture, and steeply sloped hills for energy use in local homes.By increasing efficiency, improved cookstoves decrease household energy and reduce deforestation rates.

Research Design and Methods
The goal of this study is to broaden the understanding of the importance of cookstoves, from beyond environmental and health impacts to include subjective improvements in an individual's experience.To achieve this, the researcher undertook a small-n case-study project based on in-depth interviews with five women in rural regions of the Western Highlands of Guatemala.The women selected were former participants of a safe-stove initiative operated by Pop Wuj, a non-profit Spanish school and development organization which directs their profits to community-based development projects in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
Pop Wuj has been installing safe-stoves in surrounding communities for 25 years and assesses eligibility for the safe-stove program largely based on financial need.To be eligible to participate in the Pop Wuj safe-stove program, the women must be currently cooking over an open fire without possessing the financial resources to procure a stove on their own.All participants in the Pop Wuj safe-stove program are impoverished women in predominantly Mayan-indigenous communities.
Participants for this study were previous participants in the Pop Wuj safe-stove program, and were identified by both the researcher, who was undertaking an internship with Pop Wuj at the time, and Pop Wuj staff who had pre-established relationships with the women.Participants were not offered compensation for their time and were contacted either by phone or in-person by the researcher and Pop Wuj staff to assess their interest in participating in the study.Those who indicated interest sat down with the researcher for a 30-minute interview which addressed their experiences before and after having their safe-stove installed.As previously stated, in the end 5 women who had previously participated in the Pop Wuj safe-stove program agreed to participate in the interviews proposed by the researcher.
The women involved in the study ranged between 32 and 60 years of age, and lived in various Mayan-indigenous communities in the Quetzaltenango, Guatemala region.The participants were all mothers, and had between 3 and 10 children each, with an average of around six children per woman.All participants had limited to zero years of formal schooling.On average, the participants had weekly family incomes of 192.4 Guatemalan quetzals (26 US dollars), which equates on a yearly basis to less than a third of the nation's 2016 GDP per capita32 .As a result, the testimonies shared by the women in this study offer a small glance into the lives of over 5 million Guatemalans living well below the poverty line, largely in rural regions 33 .Beyond Guatemala, the women interviewed throughout the study share experiences common to millions of women and girls across the developing world who do not have access to clean cooking areas.While a sample size of 5 cannot be considered a representative sample statistically, the testimonies these women share transcend their own personal experiences to tell a story common to millions across the developing world.
The stove installed by the Pop Wuj program was designed by a local Guatemalan engineer and is a slight variation on the more well-known "plancha" stove, utilized throughout Latin America and Guatemala by various development organizations.The stove consists of a cinder-block base, which is filled with fine-grain sand.From there, the fire box, made of brick, clay, and cement, is added on top.A brick ramp is then installed inside the fire box, which encourages smoke to exit via the chimney instead of the door, and a metal stove top (plancha) is secured with clay on top of the fire box.Cement is then used to seal the fire box and the stove top to ensure smoke is not able to seep out into the kitchen through any cracks.Finally, a chimney is installed to divert smoke outside the home.With the instalment of a plancha stove, families enjoy reduced wood consumption of about 60 per cent, and the impacts of indoor air pollution, with proper usage, are nearly eliminated.
Women consented to participate in the study sat down with the researcher to discuss the ways in which the installation of the plancha stove impacted their lives, outside of improved health and decreased energy needs.Interviews were performed by the researcher in Spanish without the use of a translator, and generally took 30 minutes.While the beginning of the interview considered things like income, financial pressures, family dynamics, daily routine, and hours spent in the kitchen on a daily basis, the latter part of the interview went on to consider how cookstoves are able to improve participants' sense of dignity, self-esteem, and general happiness.
Following the interview, results were transcribed and several general themes emerged which supported the hypothesis that because cookstoves are able to improve the physical health of individuals by reducing indoor air pollution, the subjective experience of the individual will also be improved with impacts to their self-esteem, general mood, and sense of dignity.

Findings Isolation
Throughout the interviews, one of the most prevalent themes to emerge was that of how improved cookstove are able to decrease isolation among users.While the impacts of loneliness have been extensively researched in the fields of psychology and sociology, there is a lack of literature in international development which considers the way in which loneliness and isolation impact populations in the developing world, especially women.As previously discussed, women in Latin America are expected to assume the largest majority of unpaid and underpaid labour within the home, translating into significant amounts of time spent in the cooking area.In cooking areas with high amounts of smoke resulting from traditional cookstoves or open fires, family members and friends are reluctant to spend time in the cooking area, resulting in large amounts of time in solitude for the woman responsible for cooking.
Research in Bangladesh demonstrates that children living in houses which suffer from indoor air pollution tend to spend the most time in the cooking areas from birth to 5 years, regardless of gender 34 .Beginning between the ages of 5 and 8 these results begin to shift based on gender as girls start to spend gradually more time in the cooking area and boys start to spend less.The results from Bangladesh showed that women between the ages of 20 and 60 in Bangladesh spent about 3.8 hours per day in the cooking area, whereas men only spent about 0.2 hours per day 35 .If women are spending 3.8 hours a day on average in the cooking area, and their children are spending on average about an hour, this translates into almost three hours a day that the woman will spend by herself in the smoke-filled cooking environment.
Drawing on the findings from this research, results in the Western Highlands of Guatemala indicate the average number of hours spent in the kitchen are higher than those discussed in the Bangladesh study.Two of the five women interviewed relied on cooking as a source of supplementary income, on top of the unpaid labour they already performed, which increased the number of hours spent in the cooking area each day to between 12 and 15.The other women, who did not rely on cooking as a supplementary source of income, spent between 5 and 6 hours a day each in the cooking area.
Alejandra* 36 , the fourth woman interviewed, spends about fifteen hours a day in her kitchen preparing both meals for her family and snacks to sell in the community.Her day begins at 5 in the morning, when she begins preparing breakfast for her 3 children and husband.Breakfast takes about an hour and a half to prepare, and generally consists of some form of maize, beans, and occasionally eggs.When her children finish eating, the youngest heads off to school, and Alejandra begins preparing snacks to sell in the agricultural community during break times in the mornings and afternoons.After she sells her morning snacks, she returns home to prepare lunch for her children, which takes about an hour.In the afternoons, she either continues to prepare food to sell as snacks or does some of the other household work, such as washing clothes and child raising.Finally, around 7 in the evening, she begins preparing dinner to serve to her family at 8:00pm, and then cleans up from the day and goes to bed, only to rise at 5:00am the next morning to start the whole process over again.
Alejandra received her plancha stove about five years ago, but before that she had been working with an open fire for nearly 27 years.Following the instalment of her plancha stove Alejandra's health improved and she saw a notable improvement in the nearly constant pain in her chest and throat.However, one of the biggest differences Alejandra noticed was the change in her family dynamics.In the 27 years she cooked over an open fire, 10 of those which she spent as a mother, Alejandra's children would not come into the kitchen because they were afraid of the open-fire and the smoke that engulfed the room.Because of this, Alejandra spent the majority of the day in her kitchen completely alone.However, following the construction of her plancha stove, Alejandra's children started spending more time in the kitchen with her, either helping prepare snacks and meals, or working on homework after school.When asked to recount what the significance of this change was for her, Alejandra -between cracking jokes with a friend who had come to visit and flipping tortillas -responded by saying "With this [plancha stove] I do not suffer at all.With my stove, I am happy."While Alejandra offered the clearest example of how the installation of safe-stoves in developing regions are able to reduce isolation among women, the same theme emerged in all 35 Ibid, 447.
interviews.Flor*, a 51-year-old unmarried mother of 5, who works as a weaver in her community and earns about 40.79 US dollars per month -well below the extreme-poverty line for Latin America of 2.50 US dollars per day (at purchasing-power parity) 37 -offered another example.Before Flor received her plancha stove her kitchen would be engulfed with harmful smoke and, because of this, her children did not like to spend any time in the kitchen -leaving Flor to spend the majority of this time by herself.After her stove was installed, Flor expressed feelings of joy and happiness that not only was her health improved, but that her family would all spend time together around the stove while she prepared the meals.This theme of isolation which emerged throughout the interviews is an important, but largely overlooked, consideration of not only safe-stove programs, but of development programs overall.While we, as academics and members of the development community, often focus on the quantifiable improvements in health or socio-economic situations derived from development programs, the time is not always taken to ask the participants why these programs are important to them.While the qualitative metrics observed in this study are harder and more timeconsuming to measure, they are just as important as the quantitative metrics.Further reading on the importance of integrating both qualitative and quantitative measures in monitoring and evaluating projects in international development are outlined in outlined in Woolcock, Bamberger and Vijayendra's 2010 book Using Mixed Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Experiences from International Development.

Soy Feliz
Another theme which emerged, and which is closely related to the previous theme of isolation, was that of self-reported increases in happiness.Within every interview, when asked to describe their feelings after the stove was installed, each participant responded, at one point or another, with "soy feliz" -"I am happy."More specifically, participants reported improvements in their self-esteem, dignity, and sense of self-worth following the construction of their plancha stove.Teresa*, a 48-year-old mother of 10, was the first to elaborate on this theme in detail.When asked to describe how she felt when she was using an open-fire to cook, Teresa replied with: [I felt] sad.It gave me shame to know my children were in the smoke, and we knew that the smoke made them sick, but we did not have the capacity to buy a new stove… especially when the children were very little we felt very bad because [they] were in the smoke and we wanted to buy a new stove.This concept of shame was an interesting theme to emerge and demonstrated that the addition of a safe-stove provides an intrinsic benefit for the women who receive them, in addition to extrinsic benefits such as improved health and quality of environmental.The ability, especially for women and mothers who suffer the most under these circumstances, to provide a safe, clean, and healthy environment to raise their children and pass their days, speaks to the core of human dignity.When people are forced to spend their days in undignified environments which are dirty, unhealthy, and physically uncomfortable, they are being told from all sides that they are lessthan.They have less money, worse health, limited access to education, and for a large part of their day, they are forced to spend hours in a dirty environment that they know has negative impacts on their own health and the health of their children.When any of these situations are improved even slightly, such as having a clean and safe environment to spend your days, dignity and self-esteem is improved as a result 38 .
The idea of reconceptualizing development to include dignity as a final goal has been introduced by a number of researchers, including John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz (2003), and was expanded upon in 2014 by Manuel Castells and Pekka Himanen in their book "Reconceptualizing Development in the Global Information Age" 39 .These frameworks attempt to present a model of development which goes beyond gross domestic product (GDP) and human development index (HDI) scores as measurements of development, a definition which the United Nations has also been trying to determine for many years 40 .This research does not attempt to expand on these theories and frameworks, rather, it aims to lend support to the idea that development goes beyond the realms of GDP and HDI, and has a very real human element which is not always appreciated.

Discussion
Considering the research presented, it is important to revisit some of the earlier themes brought forth in order to better understand the significance of these findings.The following section presents a consideration of how the impacts of safe-stove programs are able to go beyond the extensively documented health and environmental impacts and an analysis of how these impacts have a gendered impact by disproportionately impacting women and girls.
As discussed earlier, health impacts of indoor air pollution amount to a global health crisis whose effects rival those of unsafe water in terms of health impacts 41 , and contribute extensively to deforestation in developing regions.However, an aspect of safe-stoves which has had little to no attention paid is the way in which healthy cooking areas can improve the overall quality of life for the women and girls who spend large amounts of time each day in the kitchen.These improvements in quality of life include reduced isolation and improved self-esteem, dignity, and sense of self-worth.Though frameworks for development which focus on improving dignity have gained more attention in recent years, the dominant understanding of development continues to rest on conventional measures including GDP and HDI, and general improvements in quantifiable aspects such as economics and health.Through the findings presented in this research, we have a better understanding of the alternative ways which safe-stove recipients benefit, and that these improvements also have a very human element to them.
The next consideration following these findings is that these negative impacts of indoor air pollution, and subsequently the benefits provided through safe-stove programs, have a profoundly gendered bias.Studies have shown that women and girls in Latin America and across the world are disproportionately represented in domestic tasks, and undertake the majority of social reproduction, caring work, and household maintenance 42 .These gendered understandings of labour roles translate into women and girls spending a disproportionate amount of time in the cooking area, and result in women and girls suffering the majority of the impacts of indoor air pollution.While this may seem obvious, many stove programs, including the Indian National Program of Improved Cookstoves which was implemented between 1984 and 2004 43 , have been criticized for not taking a women-centred approach in the implementation of their programs 44 .These criticisms were best outlined by Mangala Subramaniam in her 2000 study Whose Interests?Gender Issues and Wood-Fired Cooking Stoves, which considered how the national safe-stove program in India ignored the needs of the women who were supposed to benefit from these stoves by taking a centralized approach to development.This centralized approach to development prioritizes the interest and needs of the state first and foremost, while restricting input from the local community and the beneficiaries of the program 45 .Because of this, women can face inequality, underrepresentation, and subordination in social programs delivered by the state 46 .To rectify this, Subramaniam argues that cookstove programs need to be the products of organized women's efforts -which include the perspectives and knowledge of the women who use them -and that cookstove programs around the world would benefit from adopting a feminist approach.
While it is not the intention of this project to critique the methods and approaches used by safe-stove programs as much as it is to understand to qualitative impacts of safer cooking environments, the approach used by Pop Wuj, the Guatemalan organization responsible for working with the women in this study, is a model for community development projects.Pop Wuj has been working throughout the surrounding communities of Quetzaltenango for 25 years and operates in the "language of solidarity" 47 .Community members are included and consulted, and there is an importance placed within the organization on reflecting on the role of power dynamics, colonialism, and the inherent biases present in social projects.The leaders of the organization are Guatemalans from the region, and the head of social projects is a woman.When asked in the interviews, all participants throughout the study reported having a very positive relationship with Pop Wuj, one which was based on respect and solidarity.

Limitations
Throughout this study several limitations emerged which need to be addressed.The two principle limitations experienced throughout this research are: potential for influence derived from power dynamics, and the limitations of a small sample size.
In all research projects in the social sciences, the researcher must be aware of the way power dynamics influence the information volunteered by participants.Power dynamics between the researcher and the participant have the ability to inhibit or alter the responses given by participants, depending on the relationship.Within this research project, there were a number of power dynamics which need to be addressed.
First is the unequal distribution of power which is inherently present when dealing with vulnerable populations.The population in this study was identified before the research was undertaken, and as such steps were taken to identify and mitigate these concerns throughout the ethics process.As such, these power dynamics are not expected to have caused significant limitations to the research.
The second power imbalance, which was not originally anticipated, was the way in which having a researcher who was associated with the organization responsible for distributing the stoves could potentially alter the responses.Women who participated in this study were identified on the basis that they had previously received a stove from Pop Wuj, a Spanish school and community-based development organization in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.The researcher at the time was undertaking an unpaid internship which worked closely with the stove program, and, as such, participants in the study knew the researcher also held a professional position within the organization.This power dynamic came to light at the end of the first interview, when Yessica* was asked if there was anything else she would like to mention, ask, or discuss.In response, she expressed to the researcher that her son and his wife are also without a stove, and she worries about how it affects the health of themselves and their young children, before asking if there was anyway the researcher could help her son and his family to get a stove from the organization.In the following interviews it was clarified with participants that the researcher had no say in stove distribution, and it is of the opinion of the researcher that the data was not dramatically altered by this dynamic.
A further limitation of this study is the small sample size.Due to time constraints and logistical challenges, the results of this study are based on 5 in-depth interviews, though the original goal was to base the conclusions off 6-8 interviews.However, despite the small sample size, the responses were fairly consistent across the interviews performed, suggesting a low standard of deviation among responses and, subsequently, a high-level of generalizability.Further, the participants in the study are reflective of the demographic which most frequently benefits from safe-stoves in Guatemala: poor, indigenous women in rural communities with multiple children, who are responsible for the household labour and spend a significant amount of their lives in the cooking area.

Conclusion
In recent decades, indoor air pollution has gained international attention for its harmful impacts on individual health and the environment.Indoor air pollution rivals unsafe drinking water in terms of health impacts48 , and contributes to deforestation across the developing world 49 .In order to mitigate some of these harmful impacts, safe-stove programs have been implemented around the world to improve cookstoves, mostly in rural communities.While the quantitative impacts of indoor air pollution have been extensively documented, little attention has been paid to the qualitative impacts.Throughout this research, interviews were performed with former safe-stove recipients in the Western Highlands of Guatemala to better understand the qualitative impacts of improved cookstoves.
Throughout the research a number of themes emerged which supported the argument that, because cookstoves are able to improve the physical health of individuals by reducing indoor air pollution, the subjective experience of the individual will also be improved with impacts to their self-esteem, general mood, and sense of dignity.While the original hypothesis was supported, an additional theme emerged which demonstrated how improved cookstoves are also able to reduce isolation in the women and girls primarily responsible for cooking.This research found that, with many of the women, their children were uncomfortable spending time in the smoke-filled kitchen and, as a result, women were spending significant amounts of time by themselves preparing meals for their families or using cooking as a supplementary income.With improved cookstoves, all of the women reported having their family spend more time in the kitchen with them as one of the benefits of their safe-stove.
Further, this research considered how the qualitative and quantitative impacts of indoor air pollution have a profoundly gendered bias, which disproportionately affects women and girls.Despite this, stove-improvement programs worldwide have been criticized for failing to prioritize the needs of women and girls who benefit the most from an improved cookstove.It is the hope of the researcher that this study will continue to support a growing momentum in development programs which considers the gendered impacts of poverty when designing and implementing projects.
Throughout this research we have prioritized a gendered approach to considering cookstove improvement programs and found that the benefits of improving cookstoves run deeper than just improving individual and environmental health.Improved cookstoves have the ability to improve a woman's sense of self-worth, dignity, and self-esteem.It is the intention of this researcher that these qualitative impacts are considered to be as important as the quantitative ones, and that the improvement in people's' subjective experience are also considered as potential benefits of improved cookstoves alongside improvements in health and the physical environment.