Socio-Economic Impact of Biogas Energy on Rural Women (A Case Study of Chandragadi VDC in Jhapa District)

Abstract

While talking about the impacts of biogas to rural women, one counts a number of benefits like it minimises the workloads and time of fetching firewood, motivates male to help in kitchen works and kitchen gardening and also make marginalised community inclusive to the livelihood programme for the betterment. Further to the social impact, it also have economic impacts like saving money of firewood, minimisation of health costs due to health improvements, women participation in economic works and slurry use for increasing the productivity of farms. The number of impacts goes even more when environmentalists explain them. However, using the concept of social structure of gender and following the field study with structured questionnaires and focus group discussion the study found that the effect of biogas is general in nature. It has made the work easier within the social construction of gender, but it has no effect to increase women participation in income generating activities outside the farm. After installation of biogas plant women left to go to jungle for collecting firewood or they are saving money by not buying firewood anymore. Social activities of women are mostly religious, which are also parts of the social construction. Besides these observations the study found that biogas program in Jhapa is not able to benefit Dalits and minorities as they are not included in the program significantly. The other weakness is that it is also not able to demonstrate the benefits of biogas for lighting and thus, is limited to cooking and slurry use for kitchen gardening and farms. However, biogas program, in general, has positive effects to reduce the workload and improve health situation of women.