It was 2001, and an earthquake had just hit Gujarat, a state in western India. Thousands of people died and nearly 400,000 homes were destroyed. So new homes were needed, but Gujarat’s rebuilding project had a major data gap: women weren’t included or even consulted in the planning process. Hence the kitchenless homes. In some confusion I ask Fordham how people were expected to cook. ‘Well, quite,’ she replies, adding that the homes were also often missing ‘a separate area that’s usually attached to a house where the animals are kept’, because animal care isn’t on the whole a male responsibility. ‘That’s women’s work.’
If this sounds like an extreme one-off, it isn’t. The same thing happened in Sri Lanka four years later.2 It was after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami which swept across the coasts of fourteen countries bordering the Indian Ocean, killing a quarter of a million people in its wake. And just like in Gujarat, Sri Lanka’s rebuilding programme didn’t include women, and, as a result, they built homes without kitchens. A related issue arises in refugee camps when humanitarian agencies distribute food that must be cooked – but forget to provide cooking fuel.
Source: Invisible Women | By: Caroline Criado Perez
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