Do women’s decision-making roles influence household energy choices? Evidence from South Africa

Abstract Despite women bearing primary responsibility for cooking and fuel collection in low- and middle-income countries, they often have limited influence over household purchases such as cookstoves. This gap is widely hypothesized to constrain the adoption of clean cooking technologies. While prior research has established a link between women’s intra-household bargaining power and cooking decisions, most studies rely on unidimensional measures that obscure important nuances. This paper advances the literature by examining how multidimensional measures of women’s empowerment relate to electric cooking adoption in rural and urban South Africa, a rare and valuable case study of relatively widespread electric cooking uptake in the Global South. Drawing on five waves of panel data from the National Income Dynamics Study, we construct a composite empowerment variable capturing perceived decision-making authority across five domains and estimate its association with electric cooking use via household- and individual-level logit models. We find that greater female intra-household decision-making power is associated with a higher likelihood of electric cooking adoption. Decomposing the composite measure, we further discover that this relationship is driven primarily by non-financial decision-making authority. Financial decision-making power, whether measured by perceived authority or receipt of a Child Support Grant, shows no significant association with electric cooking use. These findings suggest that policies aimed at accelerating the clean energy transition should prioritize broadening and strengthening women’s roles in household decision-making.