Cooking in rural India is a responsibility primarily assigned to young girls, passed down from mothers, reinforcing traditional gender roles. In my projects through Smokeless Cookstove Foundation, I have travelled across 15 Indian states and worked in almost 200 villages and blocks for workshops and training programmes. While for me the connecting thread is traditional and open fire cookstoves, we ask to validate the most heart-breaking questions like who is responsible for collection firewood in your house? who is responsible for cooking food and doing every other chore?
We know the answers, and yet to validate the already well researched and documented data point in Access to Clean Cooking projects, we still ask. To get a statistic that can validate the funding of the project… to throw it to the world that this project is saving lives of women.
My question today, do we realise the weight of these questions as well their response from a fundamental and systemic issue that women naturally pass this onto their daughters… No questions asked, no permissions taken, no choice given.
The Burden of Cooking
In rural India, cooking is not just a household task but a gendered obligation that young girls inherit from their mothers. From ages as young as eight, girls are expected to master skills like rolling rotis or tending fires, preparing them for a life of domestic labor. This tradition, deeply embedded in cultural norms, often overshadows their education and personal aspirations, perpetuating a cycle of gender inequity.
Kitchen is often portrayed as the heart of the home—a space of tradition and nourishment. Yet, for young girls, it is a place where an invisible burden is passed from mother to daughter, with far-reaching implications for safety, dignity, gender, and climate equity. This blog makes an attempt to explore whether rural kitchens in India are safe spaces delves into how cooking, as an inherited duty, shapes the lives of young girls.
A Gendered Legacy in Rural Kitchens
Cooking in rural Indian households is a gendered obligation rooted in cultural norms. Girls as young as eight are drawn into the kitchen, learning to roll rotis, stir curries, or tend fires—not as a choice, but as preparation for a life of domestic labor. Boys rarely face these expectations. Mothers, shaped by the same norms, pass down recipes and responsibilities, perpetuating a cycle where girls prioritize family needs over their own. The 2021 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) notes that 60% of rural Indian women spend over four hours daily on unpaid domestic work, with cooking dominating their time . For young girls, this burden begins early, often stealing hours from education or childhood, reinforcing gender inequities from one generation to the next.
Safety & Health Hazards of the Rural Hearth on young girls
Rural kitchens pose significant safety risks. Most rely on chulhas fuelled by firewood or dung, exposing girls to smoke, burns, and chronic health issues. A 2019 study in Uttar Pradesh found 45% of rural girls under 15 had reduced lung capacity due to cooking smoke exposure. Young girls, tasked with stoking flames or fetching fuel, face daily hazards. Mothers teach their daughters to endure these conditions, embedding danger into the legacy of cooking.
Interestingly, and often enough when we ask questions about the health-related aspects due to smoke cookstoves, women laugh it off. And their reason being – “its what my mother used to do..and this is what we do.” And what about the next generation of girls? Imagine the health impact of this smoke on a young adolescent girl – it affects her menstrual cycle, making her prone to anaemia and several other risks, affecting her reproductive health, her ability to go through pregnancy in a healthy manner and ultimately affecting the health during pre- and post-natal scenarios both for herself and her child.
This is a vicious and often unescapable cycle and again a systemic problem which can’t be solved alone by replacing a traditional cookstove with an improved cookstove. Critics and sometimes I myself argue that at least something shifts and change happens.. But the question is whether that ‘some change’ is sustainable and for how long? and does even scratch the surface for a shifting paradigm?.
Dignity Undermined by Duty
The expectation to master cooking erodes girls’ dignity in rural India. A girl scolded for uneven rotis or pulled from school to prepare meals learns her value lies in domestic performance. In many villages, marriage prospects hinge on culinary skills, reducing girls to providers rather than individuals with aspirations. A 2020 report by the Centre for Catalyzing Change found 30% of rural girls drop out of school by age 15, with cooking and household chores cited as primary reasons. This right there is a bigger issue to be looked at. During our workshops and programmes we often tell our women participants that they need to ensure that their daughters don’t skip school at the cost of sharing the burden of house hold chores, but I know in my heart, that even when the mother wants to let her daughter escape this burden, she herself has too much on her own plate and succumbs to throwing her daughter into this burden. Mothers, bound by these norms, reinforce them, believing it’s the only path to social acceptance for their daughters willingly or forcibly. This cycle strips girls of agency, tying their worth to the kitchen. Through SCF programmes, we get the opportunity to visit as well include Zilla Parishad and Aaaganwadis in our projects. How and where the community stands in terms of their energy ecosystems, these institutions can play a big role, especially when it comes to influencing children and mothers, through children.
Climate Inequity and the Kitchen Burden
Cooking in rural kitchens contributes to ‘climate inequity’ and I think this is where the focus of all the World’s climate conscious people and think tanks are. Girls spend hours gathering fuel, tethering them to labor that harms both the environment and their futures.
Can Responsibilities Shift?
While modern cooking technologies could reduce the time and effort required for cooking, they do not automatically shift the responsibility away from young girls. Cultural expectations continue to place cooking duties on girls, even in households with LPG, as studies show no significant reduction in their domestic workload . Without broader societal changes challenging gender roles, the burden remains unchanged, tying girls to the kitchen.
Rural kitchens in India are not safe spaces for young girls—not physically, emotionally, or environmentally. The burden of cooking, passed from mother to daughter, endangers health, undermines dignity, entrenches gender roles, and perpetuates climate inequity. Modern cooking choices, while increasingly available, are limited by cost, accessibility, and cultural barriers, and do not yet shift the responsibility away from young girls. This burden is not the fault of mothers or daughters but the product of a system that equates a girl’s worth with her ability to serve. The kitchen, meant to nourish, instead becomes a space where girls inherit a legacy of sacrifice.
This documentation is not to recommend or try to promote a type of cooking solution but is an attempt to simply raise questions and, shift towards deeply listening to those questions, recognising their weight and burden which often is ‘unspoken’ but lived and felt.
About the author
Nitisha is the Founder & Director of Smokeless Cookstove Foundation that works with communities such as adivasis of Warli Pada to create awareness about clean energy and various livelihood linkages connected to clean energy. Her NGO teaches such communities the skill of making an improved mud cookstove model from naturally available materials based on Rocket Stove Technology to help them reduce drudgery emanating from rudimentary cooking methods.
Photo is only for representation purpose
