Multiple Temporalities of Household Labour: The Challenge of Assessing Women’s Empowerment Gregory L. Simon, Cody Peterson, Emily Anderson, Brendan Berve, Marcelle Caturia and Isaac Rivera ABSTRACT The economic empowerment of women remains a central feature of develop- ment projects worldwide. This article explores these empowerment aspira- tions by examining various temporal complexities related to two develop- ment projects in South India targeting individual cooking and fuel-collection routines. It argues that three temporal considerations of household labour — polychronic time, collectivized time and hybrid labour/leisure time — are largely overlooked, thus challenging the appropriateness of empower- ment strategies from the outset. By highlighting key household dynamics this study argues that efforts to pursue economic empowerment by members of the clean cookstove sector devalue unpaid labour and glorify waged work that is often tedious and mediated by powerful men. Further, waged work can be burdensomely added to pre-existing unpaid domestic labour respon- sibilities. This common portrayal of empowerment by the clean cookstove sector can be viewed as facilitating the advancement of a neoliberal vision of rural women’s livelihoods where empowerment and agency are reconfigured and incorporated into the problematic wage relations of capitalist economies. This view of empowerment, which privileges market participation, also over- looks many of the actually experienced positive effects of improved stoves; benefits which tend to be domestic, communal, routine, non-economic and difficult to quantify. The article argues that conventional definitions and vi- sions of ‘empowerment’ should be re-evaluated to include forms of ‘mun- dane agency’. All research findings stem from a US National Science Foundation Grant (No. 1539746) to examine clean cookstove use in South India. We are very grateful for the comments and insights provided by the three anonymous reviewers. We are deeply indebted to NGO leadership and staff at multiple field locations in both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh who were incredibly generous with their time. This research was carried forward because of their many profound insights and valuable logistical assistance. Most critically, this research would not have been possible without the participation of innumerable individuals and households in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh who shared their homes and time with the research team. We are immeasurably grateful for their warmth, patience and generosity. Development and Change 52(2): 289–315. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12616 © 2020 International Institute of Social Studies.