Female labour force participation, power dynamics, and adoption of LPG for cooking in Ghana

Abstract

Cooking with solid fuels has been identified to pose health and environmental risks especially to women and children who bear the primary and heaviest burden of collecting firewood and cooking. While liquefied petroleum gas is recognized as a clean energy source that could alleviate the issues associated with solid fuels, empirical research has not extensively explored how women's involvement in the labour force and their power dynamics could promote the adoption of liquefied petroleum gas. This study addresses this gap by examining female labour force participation, power dynamics, and adoption of liquefied petroleum gas in Ghana using mixed-effect logistic regression model. The findings suggest that increasing women’s participation in the labour market increases the likelihood of adoption of liquefied petroleum gas as a cooking fuel by 2.5 times. However, married women with limited decision-making power in their households are less likely to adopt liquefied petroleum gas as a cooking fuel. Policy should be geared towards empowering women by giving them employable skills through training.