Sharing the burden: Shifts in family time use, agency and gender dynamics after introduction of new cookstoves in rural Kenya

•Women reported spending just over an hour less per day cooking after receiving the intervention stove.•The SUMs data showed a consistent but not exclusive use of the Kuniokoa with an average of 30% of all cooking carried out on the intervention stove.•Reported time spent collecting fuel dropped from an average of 12 h per week to 5 h per week after receiving the intervention stove.•A majority of the participants reported that they used the freed-up time and energy for economically productive tasks.•It was not necessary to achieve near complete displacement of the baseline technology to see impacts on time quantity and quality. It is estimated that women in Sub-Saharan Africa spend three times longer than men on unpaid work, such as household chores and caregiving. ‘Time poverty’ restricts women's involvement in paid work, as well as educational, political, and social activities, thereby perpetuating gender inequality, economic poverty, and a persistent drudgery trap. A significant time burden for women living in communities dependent on biomass fuel and traditional cookstoves arises from the procurement and preparation of fuel, as well as from long hours cooking on inefficient, polluting stoves. We used a mixed methods study in 55 households in rural Kenya to explore the impact of introducing a more efficient biomass cooking technology on time use and quality. Quantitative survey, stove use monitors (SUMs), and qualitative research methods were used before and after households were given new wood burning stoves.