Creating a GENDER-SMART CLEAN COOKING SECTOR
Clean cooking can positively impact climate, health, and socioeconomic conditions, but without an intentional focus on gender dynamics, this potential is only partially realized.
© Carol Gathigia / Clean Cooking Alliance
Involving women in decision-making, innovation, and entrepreneurship opportunities related to clean cooking not only enhances the sector’s effectiveness but also dismantles barriers to gender equality.
By enabling women to take ownership of their energy choices, the industry becomes a catalyst for their economic autonomy, skill development, and empowerment, resulting in a more equitable and sustainable future for all.
When women enter the marketplace, whether as entrepreneurs, employees, or consumers, they have immense potential to spur economic growth.
In Kenya, a study found that women cookstove entrepreneurs sold three times as many stoves as their male peers when given the same level of training and support. Building a gender-smart clean cooking sector is critical to accelerating progress toward universal access, but it requires dedicated support to women entrepreneurs and employees, gender mainstreaming tools for clean cooking enterprises, and a dramatic increase in gender-lens investment.
© Daniel Mutema / Clean Cooking Alliance
Despite making up 39% of the global labor force, women account for only 16% of the formal energy sector, and these numbers are even lower in management positions. The barriers women face in the energy sector are similar to those elsewhere in the economy. There is, however, an urgency to attract and retain a diverse workforce in the energy sector to ensure innovation and the inclusive perspectives needed to support a just and equitable energy transition.
It has been widely demonstrated that companies with a larger share of women in senior roles have significantly higher returns and that companies with greater employee diversity out-innovate and outperform others. Further, having women in leadership positions enables companies to gain insights into the preferences of female customers, which can generate better business success.
This is especially true in the clean cooking sector. It is the founding rationale behind the Women in Clean Cooking Mentorship Program (WICC). Launched by the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) in 2021, together with the Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition (GWNET) and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), the WICC program equips women entrepreneurs, managers, and employees in the clean cooking industry with a comprehensive toolkit to grow and thrive as leaders while fostering a dynamic and supportive community of like-minded professionals.
The WICC program pairs early-career women employees and entrepreneurs with expert 1:1 mentorship to develop specific professional and leadership goals. The first two WICC cohorts cumulatively supported 90 women from 26 countries. Mentees have the opportunity to meet with clean cooking experts who provide them with invaluable insights, experience, support, and knowledge.
By engaging in bilateral interaction with mentors over nine months, mentees refine their strategic thinking and generate innovative ideas to excel in their field. The program’s regional focus on early to mid-career professionals in Africa and Asia ensures a localized and impactful experience for participants. This mentorship, along with knowledge-transfer webinars and networking sessions, is helping to foster the next generation of clean cooking leaders.
Women’s involvement and leadership in the clean cooking sector can transform products, sales, and company operations while improving the lives of employees, their families, and communities. Programs like WICC create a virtuous cycle of women supporting women as leaders and changemakers.
The third WICC cohort launched in early September 2023, expanding to support 90 mentees.
To develop and deploy the next generation of clean cooking entrepreneurs and employees, the sector must cultivate gender-smart enterprises that value women’s talent and mainstream gender into business operations.
This involves a comprehensive shift in organizational mindset, by integrating gender considerations into every facet of the enterprise, from leadership positions to product development and marketing strategies. Recognizing that gender mainstreaming enhances both social equity and business efficacy, clean cooking enterprises can harness the diverse perspectives of women to drive innovation and cater to a broader clientele.
Gender mainstreaming within clean cooking enterprises goes beyond numerical representation; it encompasses inclusive work environments that address the specific needs and aspirations of female employees. Flexible work arrangements, mentoring programs, and skill development initiatives tailored to women can provide a supportive foundation for their professional growth. By demonstrating a commitment to gender mainstreaming, clean cooking enterprises can attract a broader customer base, build stronger partnerships, and gain a competitive advantage in the market.
To further this effort, CCA provides Gender-Smart Advisory Support (GSAS) to clean cooking companies in its Venture Catalyst program to build their capacity to mainstream gender into business operations.
Palmis Enèji, a social enterprise in solar lighting and clean cooking solutions in Haiti, faced the challenge of increasing its female workforce, retaining its skilled female employees, and elevating the careers of its female workers to assume leadership positions. The organization’s marketing strategy and last-mile distribution campaigns had not been successful, resulting in lower engagement with the organization’s key customer base and limited success in sales profits.
These challenges hindered Palmis Enèji’s growth and limited its impact in providing sufficient clean cooking access to households in Haiti, thus perpetuating the cyclical trap of gender inequality. Through CCA’s GSAS program, Palmis Enèji identified demand and supply side constraints to increasing gender diversity in the organization, along with actionable steps to bridge these shortcomings.
Circle Gas, a Kenyan LPG company, also engaged CCA’s GSAS program. Beginning with a “gender diagnostic” assessment to understand the company’s starting point for building an inclusive and diverse workforce, Circle Gas received tailored technical assistance to enhance gender mainstreaming efforts across its internal and external operations.
Agreeing that gender equality is a shared company goal requires senior leadership buy-in and inter-departmental collaboration to ensure consistent messages and policies.
Engage critical departments, including sales, human resources, legal, and marketing, to compile data and review current policies and progress on gender.
© Mauro Vombe / Clean Cooking Alliance
Use tools such as the Women’s Empowerment Principles Gender Gap Analysis Tool to benchmark against partners, competitors, and industry leaders to understand the gaps in your current practices and find opportunities to improve.
Learning from the diagnostic assessment, companies should choose specific areas to invest in and make public commitments to progress. Focus on areas where the company can have the most impact without ignoring issues that are challenging or less marketable.
Tracking and communicating performance on the representation and progress of women across the company’s value chain is essential to ensuring accountability and continuous improvement. It also helps to secure gender-lens investment and partnerships and to attract and retain top talent.
