From boiling to frying: Clean cooking transitions, women’s work, and the reshaping of Indigenous food practices in Nagaland, India​

Clean cooking policies are often promoted as a way to improve women’s welfare by reducing time spent cooking. Yet it remains unclear whether a shift to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and its sustained use, translates into meaningful reductions in women’s cooking time, or whether it instead reshapes how households prepare food. Using household survey data from Indigenous communities in Nagaland, India, this paper examines clean fuel transitions in a remote and under-studied region where firewood use and boiling-based cooking practices remain culturally embedded. We analyse these relationships through the lens of women’s occupational roles, recognising that differences in work schedules, flexibility, and income stability may influence LPG adoption and LPG use intensity. We find that women in salaried and self-employed occupations use LPG significantly more intensively than farmers and homemakers. Instrumental variable estimates show no robust evidence that exclusive LPG use reduces total cooking time. Instead, LPG use is associated with higher edible oil consumption, suggesting that clean fuel transitions may reshape food preparation practices rather than reduce cooking duration. These findings challenge the assumption that clean cooking benefits women primarily through time savings and highlight the importance of women’s livelihoods and local food contexts in shaping household energy transitions and their implications for diets, nutrition and well-being.