I read
an article about UN buying generators for women in Burkina Faso so that they can save dozens of hours a week that they spend pounding rice and other grain by hand.
I have two different opinions on it. On one hand, I totally support freeing women from menial tasks so they can reprioritize and devote their time to other tasks. On the other hand, I wish that it wasn't just introducing fossil fuel generators, but instead solar generators, wind or water mills, or bicycle powered grinders like Maya Pedal creates. Wind and water mills are some of the oldest machines in existence, and might even be more affordable than the generators, while bicycles are affordable and multiply the women's power tremendously.
At the end of the day, these women are better off, but I wish they'd been empowered to come up with solutions not reliant on external inputs but instead using locally available, sustainable resources. Hopefully the UN will figure out that they can do more than just provide handouts...
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