158 Staying Healthy
Special
Needs of
Women
393
work
➤ Work with your
community to lower
women’s workload.
Stoves that use less
fuel (page 395) and
village water sources
improve everyone’s
lives.
Rest and exercise
Rest
Most women work very hard cooking, carrying water, and
collecting fuel to help their families survive. If a woman also
works outside her home, she has a double burden. She may
work all day at a factory, in an office, or in the fields, and then
return home to her second job—caring for her family. All this
hard work can lead to exhaustion, malnutrition, and sickness,
because she does not have enough time to rest or enough
food to give her energy for her tasks.
To help reduce a woman’s
workload, family members can
share the burden of work
at home. Cooking, cleaning,
and gathering fuel and water
with other women
(together or in turns)
can also help make
a woman’s burden
lighter. Whether
she works for pay or
not, she probably needs help
caring for her children. Some
women organize child care cooperatives, where one woman
cares for young children so that others can work. Each woman
pays something to the woman caring for the children or they
each take a turn.
If a woman is pregnant, she
needs even more rest. She can
explain to her family why she
needs rest, and ask them for
extra help with her workload.
I am so tired of sitting!
I need to get more
exercise. Maybe I
should walk home...
404
sitting or standing for
a long time
Exercise
Most women get plenty of
exercise doing their daily tasks.
But if a woman does not move
much while she works—for
example, if she sits or stands all
day in a factory or office—she
should try to walk and stretch
every day. This will help keep her
heart, lungs, and bones strong.
Where Women Have No Doctor 2012