Clean cooking fuel interventions can substantially advance Sustainable Development Goals related to health, poverty, gender equality and (possibly) climate change. Here we systematically review gender roles within cookstove randomized control trials (RCTs) with respect to (1) health and exposure; (2) time, labour, finance and behaviour; (3) climate; and (4) the research activities. We focus on RCTs because public health scholarship considers RCTs, despite limitations, to provide the highest-quality evidence to guide policy and widescale programming. Across our 123 included studies, women are frequently targeted but then not acknowledged in time, labour, finances and even health outcomes. Acknowledgement of gender norms is scarce. Using WHO gender-responsiveness categories, we find that 37% of studies were gender-unequal or gender-unaware. Women are often monitored only as proxies for their unborn children, our category of gender-unaware but sex-aware (26%). Twenty-nine percent are gender-sensitive, with only 6% gender-specific and two gender-transformative studies. We present recommendations for the field to shift to more gender-sensitive research designs, without which the field risks leaning into existing inequalities and basing future interventions on spuriously gender-neutral premises.
Gill‐Wiehl et al. (Mon,) studied this question.