Empowering Girls Triggers Their Brothers to Compete : Evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in Uganda
This brief has key messages through an experiment in Uganda, we find that empowering adolescent girls triggers a surge in their brothers’ competitiveness.Understanding preferences for competition is important because competitiveness is a predicto...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/978131476955244331/Empowering-girls-triggers-their-brothers-to-compete-Evidence-from-a-lab-in-the-field-experiment-in-Uganda http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25447 |
| Summary: | This brief has key messages through an
experiment in Uganda, we find that empowering adolescent
girls triggers a surge in their brothers’
competitiveness.Understanding preferences for competition is
important because competitiveness is a predictor of labor
market outcomes. To examine gender differences in preference
for competition, the World Bank’s Africa GenderInnovation
Lab, in collaboration with researchers from the University
of Maryland and ColumbiaUniversity, launched a
lab-in-the-field experiment within a randomized control
trial of BRAC’scommunity-based Empowerment and Livelihood
for Adolescents (ELA) program in Uganda.The ELA program
simultaneously provided vocational and life skills training
for girls aged 14 to 20. An impact evaluation of ELA showed
that it empowered girls along economic and social
dimensions: the program increased girls’ participation in
self employment, improved girls’ control over their bodies,
and shifted deep rooted gender norms held by adolescent
girls in communities that participated in the program. Four
years after the implementation began, we used a
lab-in-the-field experiment to compare communities that
received ELA with those that did not. The aim of this
experiment was to test whether girl’s empowerment would have
a direct impact on girls’ or boys’ competitiveness. To
measure preferences for competition, we implemented the
experimental protocol of Niederle and Vesterlund (2007).
More specifically, participants were asked to select a
compensation scheme before performing a simple task, from
which we identified their taste to compete. They either
chose to be paid according to a competitive tournament
scheme or a non competitive piece-rate scheme. The
experiment was designed to control for a host of factors
such as individual differences in ability, overconfidence,
risk aversion, and altruism. Our findings highlight the
impact of gender equality on gender differences in
competitiveness: when boys are faced with more empowered
sisters, they increase their competitiveness. This suggests
that the benefits of adolescent girls’ empowerment programs
may spill over beyond the participating girls themselves to
their brothers. More work needs to be done to understand if
the changed behavior in brothers will have persistent
effects on girls in the future. |
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