3Envirofit, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA Globally, women's involvement in clean cooking value chains has been minimal. This is partly because of the multiple challenges faced by women that impede their capacity to effectively engage in the energy sector. To better discern gender-specific differences in involvement in the energy sector, the authors conducted a randomized trial in Kenya to compare sales performance of newly trained male and female improved cookstove entrepreneurs and to test the effects of an agency-based empowerment training on business activity. A total of 257 entrepreneurs completed either a 4-day entrepreneurial training (control) or a 4-day empowerment training (intervention) and were followed for nearly 8 months documenting business activity and sales. The empowerment training led to more than doubling of sales for both genders. In addition, participants in the intervention group were significantly more likely to demonstrate business commitment over time and nearly three times more likely to be higher sellers (relative risk ¼ 2.7, 95% CI [1.4, 5.4]), controlling for gender and rural=urban locale. Women outsold men by a margin of nearly 3 to 1 and were more likely to continue to pursue leads despite limited sales. Nonactive participants (those selling 1 improved cookstove or less) were a larger percentage of the control group (72%) than the intervention group (50%), and more men were nonactive participants (65% of men) compared with women (56% of women).These data show that women can serve as active improved cookstove entrepreneurs in both urban and rural settings and that targeted agency-based empowerment training can significantly increase women's capacity to engage effectively within the improved cookstove value chain.There is growing evidence that women can play a critical role in the promotion and sales of improved cookstoves (ICSs) because of their roles and experience as primary cooks and household energy managers (Batliwalla & Reddy, 1996;Cecelski, 2000;Dutta, 2005;Kö hlin, Sills, Pattanayak, & Wilfong, 2011;Smith & Dutta, 2011). As key beneficiaries of ICSs, women can drive demand as consumers and users, and they can catalyze more consistent ICS use and adoption. Moreover, women can leverage their existing networks to promote the adoption of these new technologies and use their firsthand experiences for marketing the ICS.Despite early efforts to include women throughout the ICS value chain, the marketing and sales force remains dominated by men (Ramanathan & Carmichael, 2008). Efforts are lagging, as integration has been difficult because of sociocultural constraints on women and a lack of basic education and skills. Often overlooked is the role of individual agency and voice in fostering greater involvement of women as entrepreneurs. Agency can be defined as ''an actor's or group's ability to make powerful choices'' (Samman & Santos, 2009) and voice is referred to as ''the capacity to speak up and be heard '' (Klugman et al., 2014). Women disproportionally face psychosocial challenge...

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