Jillene Connors Belopolsky
Chief of Staff and Chief External Affairs Officer
The Importance of Women’s Involvement in Clean Cooking
To ensure that an investment-ready pipeline of clean cooking companies sets the foundation for an inclusive industry, women must be a part of the process. To date, women remain an underutilized asset in achieving this goal. Moreover, lack of access to clean cooking disproportionately affects women and girls, limiting their ability to participate and benefit equally in the economy and society.
To address this challenge, CCA is committed to advancing the professional talent and business trajectory of women entrepreneurs and employees in the sector, widening the space for applying a gender-lens across interventions, and strengthening the evidence on how clean cooking improves women’s lives.
Read CCA’s Gender Factsheet
CCA’s Gender Strategy
CCA’s Gender Strategy outlines the following goals:
Building the Capacity of Businesses
CCA is undertaking a range of activities to build businesses’ capacity to meaningfully involve women, including by:
Gender-Focused Research and Advocacy
CCA continues to build the evidence base for how clean cooking solutions positively impact women’s lives, and why clean cooking should be prioritized within the global development agenda.
Read CCA’s Women Energizing Change SeriesCCA’s Women in Clean Cooking Mentorship Program
CCA’s “Women in Clean Cooking” (WICC) mentorship program, launched in 2020, supports women across Africa and Asia, connecting senior professionals to serve as mentors and deliver a positive impact to more junior women in the sustainable energy sector.
Read about the mentorship programYouth for Clean Cooking
CCA recognizes the vital role of youth in achieving universal access to clean cooking, contributing to the cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable future that young people need to thrive. CCA is developing a youth engagement strategy, with the goal to achieve sustainable and equitable youth engagement contributing to the strengthening of the clean cooking sector.
Read about CCA's youth engagement strategy