Generally, rural women are greatly involved in managing household energy systems. Rural women are also the ones who are directly affected by the rural energy crisis. As mentioned in previous sections, traditional firewood cooking causes faster depletion of biomass resources and increases the time that women require in collecting firewood. These activities consume a great deal of the time and labour of women and increase the drudgery of women. In addition, the use of traditional energy technologies has a negative impact on women’s health due to the smoke from firewood and their heavy workload. There is

therefore the need for an intervention, that help to reduce women’s labour and time, which could be used for other productive purposes, and to improve the health conditions of women. In this regards, an intervention with anaerobic digestion is needed. Such an intervention should be based on gender concerns both at macro and micro levels in terms of recognizing women’s roles and responsibilities and their priorities regarding rural energy. The focus should be on reducing expenditure of human energy rather than only saving fuel. Hence, it is very important here to consider the practical gender needs, which fulfil the regular energy needs at household level while saving the time and labour of women, and the strategic gender needs, which provides the opportunities for women to be involved in social and economic activities for their self-enhancement and empowerment.