Women’s Empowerment in Action : Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa
Women in developing countries are disempowered: high youth unemployment, early marriage and childbearing interact to limit their investments into human capital and enforce dependence on men. The authors evaluate a multi-faceted policy intervention...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/707081502348725124/Women-s-empowerment-in-action-evidence-from-a-randomized-control-trial-in-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28282 |
| Summary: | Women in developing countries are
disempowered: high youth unemployment, early marriage and
childbearing interact to limit their investments into human
capital and enforce dependence on men. The authors evaluate
a multi-faceted policy intervention attempting to jumpstart
adolescent women’s empowerment in Uganda, a context in which
60 percent of the population are aged below twenty. The
intervention aims to relax human capital constraints that
adolescent girls face by simultaneously providing them
vocational training and information on sex, reproduction and
marriage. The authors find that four years
post-intervention, adolescent girls in treated communities
are 48 percent more likely to engage in income generating
activities, an impact almost entirely driven by their
greater engagement in self-employment. Teen pregnancy falls
by 34 percent, and early entry into marriage/cohabitation
falls by 62 percent. Strikingly, the share of girls
reporting sex against their will drops by close to a third
and aspired ages at which to marry and start childbearing
move forward. The results highlight the potential of a
multi-faceted program that provides skills transfers as a
viable and cost-e¤ective policy intervention to improve the
economic and social empowerment of adolescent girls over a
four year horizon. |
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