Search

• We examine the impact of the 2017 flood in Bangladesh on time use, women's empowerment, and income-generating activities (IGA). • After the flood, women spend less time on domestic work and more on IGA, while men engage more in domestic work. • These results are confirmed only for individuals who experienced another flooding event occurred in 2014. • The response to the 2017 shock depends on the 2014 shock's long-term effects on women's economic autonomy and empowerment. • Repeated exposure to negative shocks can enhance women's empowerment by improving their economicautonomy within the household. In low- and middle-income countries, differences between men and women in their time use patterns represent a major source of gender inequality. Among other factors, natural shocks can affect these differences. This paper examines the impact of the 2017 flood in Bangladesh on men's and women's time use patterns and women's empowerment. Using georeferenced and longitudinal data, we find that the flood decreased women's time spent on domestic work while increasing their engagement in income generating activities and empowerment. In contrast, men spent less time at work and increased their participation in domestic work to substitute for women's. These responses to the shock are confirmed only for those individuals who were exposed to another flooding event that occurred in 2014. To better understand the underlying mechanisms, we look at the long-term impact of the 2014 flood on women's empowerment and on their engagement in income generating activities, and we find that the shock still positively affects both variables. These results suggest that when an increase in empowerment naturally occurs within the household, it persists over time and influences reactions to subsequent shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The SZCH project in Bangladesh focused on boosting resilience to climate disasters through food security, income, education, and women's empowerment. • Rigorous analysis using PSM and DID showed significant gains in resilience for beneficiary households, including food security, income diversity, and lower disaster risk. • The project boosted absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities by enhancing assets, promoting livelihoods, and empowering women. • The active involvemen of the beneficiaries, especially women, was key in the project's success. It promoted ownership, sustainability and resilience. • The findings emphasize holistic, community-driven approaches to tackle vulnerabilities, promote gender equality, and aid climate risk adaptation. This study assesses the effects of a comprehensive rural development project on resilience to a climate shock, using the case Saemaul Zero Hunger Communities (SZHC) project implemented in central Bangladesh from 2014 to 2017. The project is suitable to such assessment since the target area was flood-prone and experienced major flooding during the project. Moreover, the project took holistic approaches that tackle multiple dimensions of vulnerability simultaneously, rather than addressing them in isolation. This study focuses on resilience capacities underpinning resilience and supposes that they are composed of absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacity. After identifying various indicators to measure each capacity, the study estimates their average treatment effects on the treated using the propensity score matching method. The results show that the SZHC project significantly helped the households' recovery from the flood in terms of food security and livelihood, and mostly enhanced the three resilience capacities: increased income and assets, reduced disruption in child education, diversified income sources, and strengthened social capital such as women's community participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the effectiveness of programs designed to empower women is important for development policy, and critically important in places with historically unequal gender norms. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a multidimensional program on women's empowerment in northern Tanzania, where our study sample is among the pastoralist and traditionally patriarchal Maasai tribe. The multidimensional approach of the program included various components: microcredit groups, business skills, livestock management, water improvements, women's rights discussions, and nutrition education. To measure the effect of the program, we employ a difference-in-differences approach, with doubly robust weighting. We use the livestock-enhanced project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), a new quantitative measurement of women's empowerment designed for communities where livestock is a main productive asset. Our analysis of the program impact shows that the multidimensional program led to higher levels of empowerment for young women, specifically more group membership, access to credit, increased control over income, and a larger input into household productive decisions. Notably, the improvement in empowerment for young women does not reflect any change in attitudes towards intimate partner violence. Despite the positive findings for young women, we do not find any change in empowerment for the full sample of women (all ages). Our results demonstrate that programming focused on women's empowerment has differential effects over a woman's life cycle. • We estimate the impact of a women's empowerment program among pastoralists in northern Tanzania. • We employ difference-in-differences estimation with doubly robust weighting. • In our sample empowered women experience less intimate partner violence. • The program led to improvements in empowerment for young women, but had no effect on the full sample of women. • It is important to consider life cycle stage and participation when designing women's empowerment programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We study the relationship between women's empowerment and adherence to recommended infant and young child feeding practices in Central Asia. • We simultaneously analyze three dimensions of empowerment: attitude toward domestic violence, social independence and decision-making power. • Woman's decision-making power—a measure of her instrumental agency—predicts greater adherence to recommended IYCF practices. • A woman's attitude toward domestic violence and social independence are not consistent predictors of adherence to recommended IYCF practices. • Associations between decision-making power and IYCF practices vary little with child gender, cohabitation with one's mother-in-law, or wealth. This paper examines the relationship between women's empowerment and infant and young child feeding practices in Central Asia using Demographic and Health Survey datasets collected during 1995–2017. We employ a measure of women's empowerment with three dimensions that is available for many recent surveys as well as a measure of decision-making power over use of one's own income present for income-earning mothers in all surveys. We identify a positive association between a woman's decision-making power—a measure of her instrumental agency—and adherence to World Health Organization–recommended feeding practices. We find little significant association between a woman's attitude toward domestic violence, or her degree of social independence, and adherence to recommended feeding practices. Our results further show that the association between women's decision-making power and feeding practices varies little with child gender, whether or not she cohabitates with her mother-in-law, or household wealth. We thus provide evidence from Central Asia that policies and programs intended to empower women can improve child feeding practices, with similar benefits across a variety of household types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We play lab-in-the-field games with couples in the Philippines. • We find the prevalence of a strong sharing rule favoring women. • Yet couples incur large efficiency losses: women prefer keeping $1 for themselves rather than receiving $1.74 from their husband. • We argue that women have a strong, latent demand for agency. Households in the Philippines are characterized by durable unions and a relatively high status of women who are entrusted with the management of household finances. In this setting conducive to cooperation, we expect households to be less inefficient than in other contexts and women to be more inclined to contribute to household income than men. We run experimental games with couples in the rural Philippines i) to test the existence of a sharing rule favouring women; ii) to measure the degree of overall household efficiency and iii) to trace the latter to gender specific behaviors. We first find the prevalence of a strong sharing norm whereby women secure about two thirds of the total couple payoffs, in line with their prominent role in the family. However, couples, and in particular women, incur large efficiency losses of about half of the potential gains offered by the games. We interpret this finding as revealing a strong, latent demand for agency by women who express a strong preference for own money over (larger) transfers from their husband as the latter involve an implicit control over their use. These findings challenge a naive view of female empowerment that solely focuses on the nominal control over household resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project aims to explore the effect of wealth shocks on education and marriage for young women in Pakistan. Financial shocks are used to estimate the probability of dropping out of education and into marriage. Using the Pakistan Rural Household Panel survey for the years 2000–10, the effects of financial shocks on the probability of dropping out of education and into marriage are estimated for boys and girls in rural areas. Second, the returns to education in the marriage market are estimated using information on marital payments of dowry and brideprice. Lastly, the intergenerational effects of women's increased bargaining power due to marital assets is estimated. The results show wealth shocks do not have a gendered effect on school dropout. Also, adverse shocks during the teenage years do not increase the probability of early marriage. However, this relationship is negative in villages where marital payments are typically higher—that is, marriage costs can delay early marriage in shock-hit households as they are more credit-constrained. Lastly, higher educated women receive more marital assets, which can contribute to increased bargaining power within the marriage. This increased bargaining power also has intergenerational effects on children's schooling. • This study explores the gender dynamics of coping mechanisms of rural households. • How do wealth shocks effect schooling and early marriages in Pakistan? • Adverse shocks during school years do not increase drop outs beyond 12 months. • There is also no strong evidence that wealth shocks lead to early marriages for girls. • However, in villages with higher marital payments, costs can delay early marriages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The pro-WEAI is a new tool designed to meet projects' impact assessment needs. • Projects identified and field-tested pro-WEAI indicators using mixed methods. • Pro-WEAI is mapped to 3 domains: intrinsic, instrumental, and collective agency. • Pro-WEAI is decomposable into sub-indices, indicators, and by population subgroup. • Women are more disempowered and have a higher intensity of disempowerment than men. With growing commitment to women's empowerment by agricultural development agencies, sound methods and indicators to measure women's empowerment are needed to learn which types of projects or project-implementation strategies do and do not work to empower women. The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which has been widely used, requires adaptation to meet the need for monitoring projects and assessing their impacts. In this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women's (and men's) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women's empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household. The authors describe the development of pro-WEAI, including: (1) pro-WEAI's distinctiveness from other versions of the WEAI; (2) the process of piloting pro-WEAI in 13 agricultural development projects during the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, phase 2 (GAAP2); (3) analysis of quantitative data from the GAAP2 projects, including intrahousehold patterns of empowerment/disempowerment; and (4) a summary of the findings from the qualitative work exploring concepts of women's empowerment in the project sites. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from pro-WEAI and possibilities for further development of empowerment metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examine the impact of women's empowerment on their creditworthiness. • Women's empowerment is measured using a multidimensional index. • The sex of the first child being male is used as an instrument for empowerment. • In North India, women's empowerment has a positive effect on the loan amount • In the rest of India, education, not empowerment, increases the loan amount. We utilise primary data collected from a North Indian village to examine the impact of women's empowerment on their creditworthiness, as measured by their total annual loan amounts. Our key explanatory variable – an empowerment index – has been constructed using four factors – economic, social, interpersonal and political. We find that more empowered women received greater cumulative loans. We have instrumented empowerment by the sex of the borrower's first child being male. It seems that in the male-dominated environment of North India, the 'luck' of giving birth to first child as a son helps a woman seize opportunities for empowerment. These village-level findings regarding empowerment are consistent with the results we obtain for the whole of North India using a separate and national dataset. We also show that for the rest of India, it is education and not empowerment, that is a more important determinant of loan volumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Women participation in cane farming leads to increased financial independence and bargaining power within households. • Weaving through male-dominated access routes to owning plots for sugarcane in outgrower schemes is problematic for women. • Contract farming in cane growing leads to masculinization of ownership together with progressive feminization of labour. • Combining active women participation in contract farming with authority enhancing programs improves gender relations. Contract farming (CF) is always and inherently a gendered process. This paper unveils the gender dynamics in resource access, use and labour control to show how outgrower CF induces changes, often contradictory engendering processes of production relations. It asks: How does CF influence gender relations in access to land, household labour relations and employment conditions (participation)? Relying on a detailed case study research of a sugarcane CF scheme in Malawi, we show that CF has a complex gendered impact on household's production relations. CF leads to a masculinization of farm management and ownership together with a feminization of labour. Nevertheless, women translate such labour provision into active participation in decision-making over the use of the cash returns from the CF for better outcome in the household. At the individual level, some can benefit from it; especially women who manage to engage in cane farming are able to attain financial independence and increase their bargaining power within their households. However, such benefits are reserved for households with access to land. Nevertheless, women engagement in cane farming coupled with increased gender awareness through NGOs sensitization is contributing to a change in gendered social perceptions and increased valuation of women abilities in commercial farming, their needs and contributions and may be modifying the gender balance at the community level. We demonstrate that empowering women by making them cane farmers alone is not enough to change women position within their communities, unless community members accompany such empowerment with the recognition and acknowledgement of the women's contribution. The finding suggests that combining active women participation in outgrower CF with authority enhancing programs through community education whilst creating the possibilities for women to take independent action may be a good way to improve the gender relations between men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The first study to investigate the impact of the GET Ahead training on women's empowerment. • We focus on three aspects of women's empowerment. • We compare female borrowers invited to training with their husband, alone. • Training participation improved women's empowerment in the medium run. • Results show no additional impacts of inviting husbands to training. Across the world the Gender and Entrepreneurship Together (GET Ahead) training originally developed by the International Labour Organization has been implemented to improve business outcomes and enhance women's empowerment. This randomized controlled trial is the first rigorous attempt to examine the impact of the GET Ahead training on women's empowerment. We focus on the impact of offering this training to female microfinance borrowers of TYM, the largest microfinance organization in North Vietnam. A major contribution of this study is that it focuses on different dimensions of women's empowerment: (1) personal empowerment, measured by control beliefs, and (2) relational empowerment, measured by relational friction and intra-household decision making power. This study also stands out in that we explicitly study whether involving husbands affects the impact of the training. We find that the GET Ahead training improves women's empowerment on all three aspects: increased control beliefs and intra-household decision making power (only on larger expenditures), and decreased relational friction. However, the results on relational frictions should be taken with care due to possible underreporting. Moreover, in general, we find no additional impacts of inviting husbands to the training. Finally, our results suggest that it takes some time before the training starts to improve women's empowerment. We observe no short-term but only mid-term effects from before the training to 12 months after the training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Women generally gain autonomy in decision-making as they get older. • We hypothesize that part of this age-dividend is rooted in beliefs regarding the supernatural powers of menopaused women. • We test this hypothesis for four West-African countries that include ethnic groups that practice(d) voodoo. • We find support for our hypothesis, and also document a tangible welfare effect. Abstract In various parts of the world women gain autonomy in decision-making as they get older. We hypothesize that part of this age-dividend is rooted in (historical) beliefs regarding the supernatural powers of menopaused women. To test this hypothesis, we study the age- and menopause-dividend in women's decision-making autonomy in four West-African countries that include ethnic groups that practice(d) voodoo. Our empirical analysis relies on several rounds of DHS surveys, and a difference-in-differences strategy, in which we exploit the quasi-exogenous variation in the timing of menopause as well as the historical variation in magicoreligious beliefs across ethnicities. We find that (1) the age-dividend in women's autonomy is more pronounced in ethnic groups that practice(d) voodoo, (2) the menopause-dividend is only observed among women from these groups, and (3) it is especially large for women whose husbands believe that illness can have a supernatural cause. We also document a tangible welfare effect, in terms of a higher Body Mass Index among menopaused women of voodoo-related ethnic groups. Our study constitutes the first attempt to unpack the cross-cultural age-dividend in women's autonomy, thereby contributing to the detailed contextual knowledge needed for designing effective female empowerment policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Climate change can affect human fertility, family planning use, and births. • We find recent delays in monsoon rains are linked with lower family planning use. • Women on farms exposed to high temperatures are less likely to give birth. • Pathways linking climate change, livelihoods and fertility behaviors are unclear. Abstract Climate change is likely to induce a large range of household- and individual-level responses, including changes in human fertility behaviors and outcomes. These responses may have important implications for human and economic development and women's empowerment. Drawing on the literature linking climate conditions to rice cultivation in Indonesia, we use longitudinal household survey and high-resolution climate data to explore changes in childbearing intentions, family planning use, and births following community-level climate shocks from 1993 to 2015. We find that fertility intentions increase and family planning use declines in response to delays in monsoon onset occurring within the previous year, particularly for wealthier populations. However, women on farms are significantly more likely to use family planning and less likely to give birth following abnormally high temperatures during the previous five years. We also measure parallel shifts in household well-being as measured by rice, food, and non-food consumption expenditures. Our findings advance the environmental fertility literature by showing that longer duration environmental shocks can have impacts on fertility behaviors and outcomes. Collectively, our results illustrate human fertility responses to climate change in a country vulnerable to its effects, and demonstrate that in some cases, climate shocks can constrain human fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We analyzed the intergenerational power dynamics of money management in rural households in contemporary Nepal. • We found that junior wives and husbands often became secret allies in seeking financial autonomy from their in-laws. • Intergenerational power relations may be just as important as male-female power relations for women’s economic empowerment. Abstract Although power struggles between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law in the South Asian household remain an enduring theme of feminist scholarship, current policy discourse on ‘women’s economic empowerment’ in the Global South tends to focus on married women’s power over their husband; this neglects intergenerational power dynamics. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the processes involved in young, married women’s negotiations of control over cash inside the extended household in a contemporary rural Nepali setting. We conducted a grounded theory study of 42 households from the Plains of Nepal. Our study uncovered multiple ways in which junior wives and husbands in the extended household became secret allies in seeking financial autonomy from the rule of the mother-in-law to the wife. This included secretly saving up for a household separation from the in-laws. We argue these secret financial strategies constitute a means for junior couples to renegotiate the terms of Kandiyoti’s (1988) ‘patriarchal bargain’ wherein junior wives traditionally had to accept subservience to their husband and mother-in-law in exchange for economic security and eventual authority over their own daughters-in-law. Researchers, activists and policy-makers concerned with women’s economic empowerment in comparable contexts should consider the impact of intergenerational power relations on women’s control over cash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from two culturally distinct locales, Bangladesh and Ghana, we investigate whether men and women who report sole decision making in a particular domain experience stronger (or weaker) feelings of autonomous motivation—measured using the Relative Autonomy Index (RAI)—compared to those who report joint decision making. Used primarily in psychology, the RAI measures the extent to which an individual’s actions are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, where higher scores indicate greater autonomy. On aggregate, we find differences between men and women, and across countries, in the significance of association between the individual’s level of participation in decision-making and autonomy. In addition, we find heterogeneity in the strength of this association, depending on the domain (e.g., productive versus personal decisions) and whether partners agree on who normally makes decisions. These findings imply that details related to context and measurement matter for understanding individual decision-making power. We argue that all research using information on decision-making should include a careful analysis of men’s and women’s perceptions of decision making within the household, which may be useful for calibrating indicators to suit specific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women’s empowerment is an indicator of social change and a priority of the Sustainable Development Goals. Debate continues on what domains constitute women’s empowerment and how to measure empowerment across countries. Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are the most widely available source of data on women’s empowerment. However, measurement invariance often is assumed, but not tested. We used DHS data from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda to test factor structure and measurement invariance of women’s empowerment among married women ages 15–49. Factor analysis confirmed a three-latent-domain model of women’s empowerment in each country capturing women’s human/social assets, gender attitudes related to wife abuse, and women’s participation in household decisions. Multi-country confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) identified an invariant three-factor model of women’s empowerment and a subset of country-specific items. Our results offer a standardized, invariant measure of women’s empowerment that can be applied to monitor women’s empowerment cross-nationally in East Africa, and possibly beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite extensive literature on the complex nature of empowerment, current efforts to measure women’s empowerment in the agricultural development sector are largely limited to assessing visible forms of agency. We take a critical look at current efforts to measure women’s empowerment at the individual/household level through standardized tools. We examine the results of a household survey conducted in Nepal using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which was developed as a monitoring and evaluation tool for the Feed the Future Initiative. Our interpretation of the results is informed by qualitative fieldwork conducted in the same region. In our quantitative analysis, we regress correlates of empowerment identified in the literature, such as age, education, household wealth, income, and household composition, on individual empowerment as measured by the WEAI. While several factors associated with women’s empowerment are significantly associated, household composition and intra-household relationships, which we expected to be essential factors in the local context, appear to be unrelated to the WEAI empowerment score. A measure of critical consciousness tested alongside the WEAI instrument appears instead to be closely associated with these factors. Our qualitative findings reveal that there is a discrepancy between local meanings of empowerment and definitions of empowerment defined in terms of agency. Based on these results, we suggest that improvements in measurement may be possible if approaches that measure power predominantly in terms of agency or decision-making were to include critical consciousness in their framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Studies addressing the relationship between women’s empowerment and intimate partner violence (IPV) have yielded conflicting findings. Some suggest that women’s economic and social empowerment is associated with an increased risk of intimate partner violence (IPV), arguably because men use often IPV to enforce their dominance and reassert inegalitarian gender norms when patriarchal norms are challenged; other studies suggest the converse. It is important to understand why these findings are contradictory to create a more sound basis for designing both women’s empowerment interventions and anti-violence interventions. The aim of this study is to clarify the relationship between women’s empowerment and IPV in a setting where gender roles are rapidly changing and IPV rates are high. We examine some of the ways in which the nature of women’s empowerment evolved in six villages in rural Bangladesh during a 12-year period in which surveys have documented a decline of 11 points in the percentage of married women experiencing IPV in the prior year. The paper is based on data from 74 life history narratives elicited from 2011 to 2013 with recently married Bangladeshi women from the six villages, whom other community residents identified as empowered. Our findings suggest that women’s empowerment has evolved in several ways that may be contributing to reductions in IPV: in its magnitude (for example, many women are earning more income than they previously did), in women’s perceived exit options from abusive marriages, in the propensity of community members to intervene when IPV occurs, and in the normative status of empowerment (it is less likely to be seen as transgressive of gender norms). The finding that community-level perceptions of empowered women can evolve over time may go a long way in explaining the discrepant results in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Education is a core driver of female employment and empowerment all over the world. As development studies have shown, the strength of this educational effect however varies considerably across countries. Theoretically, we employ mechanisms from human capital theory and modernization theory that explicate the education–employment link. Next, insights from the gender and development approach lead us to hypothesize how economic, political, and socio-cultural features of countries might moderate this effect of educational attainment. Using World Values Survey data on women surveyed in 139 country–year combinations, we empirically test whether and how a country’s labor market structure, social policy, and gender norms condition the influence of women’s education attainment on employment. Employing multilevel logistic regression models with cross-level interactions, our results indicate that in countries where service sector jobs are relatively scarce, having a higher education is more important for women to get a job; it seems that highereducated women push lowereducated women out of employment under those circumstances. Most importantly, women’s educational attainment makes more of a difference in countries with conservative gender norms; in these countries women’s employment is considerably lower than in more liberal countries, but to a lesser extent for higher educated women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The Participatory Development (PD) approach aims at improving the quality of governance by empowering local populations. Particularly for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), PD is regarded an opportunity to help shift from unjustified centralization to more decentralized forms of governance. Yet, PD projects are frequently fraught with undesired effects of elite capture which critics ascribe to insufficient appreciation of local context. Our study adopts a sequential quantitative–qualitative mixed method approach to broaden the empirical foundation needed for context sensitive project design. By exploring the effects of gender and employment on community participation we contribute to narrowing two research gaps: First, political science research on female participation in SSA has mostly focused on participation in national-level processes. Second, while development economics literature has devoted much attention on effects of female employment on intra-household bargaining, it has so far omitted the question what this means for the empowerment of women beyond the household, that is in the public life of their communities. Analyzing original survey data of over 1,300 respondents, collected across four urban municipalities in Togo, we find that unemployment negatively impacts community participation. Specifically, we show that this effect is mainly driven by female unemployment and establish self-efficacy driven by norm perception as the causal link between female employment and participation. Complementing our quantitative findings with data from 98 qualitative interviews, we show that employment constitutes an important psychological resource that enables women to overcome multiple discrimination barriers to community participation. However, this effect is stronger for women in a formal employment situation than for those working in less formalized settings. We conclude that gender-targeted employment interventions can help to increase community participation. We recommend that such efforts should not fixate on the creation of female job opportunities but also seek to strengthen the role of female informal workers in local political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The empowerment of women, broadly defined, is an often-cited objective and benefit of social cash transfer programs in developing countries. Despite the promise and potential of cash transfers to empower women, the evidence supporting this outcome is mixed. In addition, there is little evidence from programs at scale in sub-Saharan Africa. We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of the Government of Zambia’s Child Grant Program, a poverty-targeted, unconditional transfer given to mothers or primary caregivers of young children aged zero to five. The quantitative component was a four-year longitudinal clustered-randomized control trial in three rural districts, and the qualitative component was a one-time data collection involving in-depth interviews with women and their partners stratified on marital status and program participation. Our study found that women in beneficiary households were making more sole or joint decisions (across five out of nine domains); however, impacts translated into relatively modest increases in the number of decision domains a woman is involved in, on average by 0.34 (or a 6% increase over a baseline mean of 5.3). Qualitatively, we found that changes in intrahousehold relationships were limited by entrenched gender norms, which indicate men as heads of household and primary decision makers. However, women’s narratives showed the transfer increased financial empowerment as they were able to retain control over transfers for household investment and savings for emergencies. We highlight methodological challenges in using intrahousehold decision making as the primary indicator to measure empowerment. Results show potential for unconditional cash transfer programs to improve the financial and intrahousehold status of female beneficiaries, however it is likely additional design components are need for transformational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Gender equality policies seeking to give women assets, particularly land, have often failed to achieve their goals. Explained as a failure of implementation and adequate resourcing, the deeper problem lies in using a segmented rather than holistic analytical framework that treats both assets and women as discrete, individual objects, rather than socially embedded and networked. Land gives meaning to people’s lives, it is more than a source of material wealth; hence access to land is coveted, contested and negotiated in multiple ways by differently positioned people. Drawing on long-term primary research in India, as well as secondary research in China and Indonesia, in relation to women’s access to land, I unpack some of the complexities and contradictions in terms of both legal and social interpretations of legitimacy as well as women’s agency. Apart from having a large proportion of their population dependent on agriculture, the choice of countries is also useful in constructing typologies of governance systems and social relations at different institutional levels that shape women’s access to land, a prime one being inheritance. I demonstrate the need for an alternate, relational framework that is both dynamic and transcends binaries, unpacking the multidimensionality of women’s agency vis-a-vis assets, in diverse livelihood, environmental and governance contexts, if gender equality goals are to be met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Surveys often aim to measure complex concepts with a few close-ended questions. We introduce a new method for selecting questions. • The method identifies the survey questions that best correspond to answers given in a qualitative interview about the concept. • We field many survey questions and use machine learning (ML) tools to find the questions that best predict the coded qualitative data. • We apply the method to create a five-question survey module to measure women's agency in north India. • The questions chosen are similar across three ML algorithms, and the resulting survey measure of women's agency performs well in diagnostics. Open-ended interview questions elicit rich information about people's lives, but in large-scale surveys, social scientists often need to measure complex concepts using only a few close-ended questions. We propose a new method to design a short survey measure for such cases by combining mixed-methods data collection and machine learning. We identify the best survey questions based on how well they predict a benchmark measure of the concept derived from qualitative interviews. We apply the method to create a survey module and index for women's agency. We measure agency for 209 married women in Haryana, India, first, through a semi-structured interview and, second, through a large set of close-ended questions. We use qualitative coding methods to score each woman's agency based on the interview, which we use as a benchmark measure of agency. To determine the close-ended questions most predictive of the benchmark, we apply statistical algorithms that build on LASSO and random forest but constrain how many variables are selected for the model (five in our case). The resulting five-question index is as strongly correlated with the coded qualitative interview as is an index that uses all of the candidate questions. This approach of selecting survey questions based on their statistical correspondence to coded qualitative interviews could be used to design short survey modules for many other latent constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Aspirations are often missing from women's empowerment models and measures. • Aspirations are related to agency, but they are more than how women make decisions, a common domain of women's empowerment. • The A-WEAI does not capture key domains of empowerment for ethnic minority women in Vietnam. • Without understanding women's aspirations, programs may not empower women. Empowerment programs for women have been key development initiatives toward achieving gender equality. Projects, models, and measurement tend to focus on resources and agency as core to empowerment. Missing from most models and research is women's own aspirations, or what they value for their futures, that affect how women use their resources and agency to achieve wellbeing. Aspirations are central to a sense of a good life and are necessary to strengthen among poor communities, but they are often overlooked among women, particularly those who are not pursuing formal schooling and who work in informal labor. This paper examines how aspirations matter for women in poverty who are working in informal sectors (agriculture and tourism) in Vietnam. It argues that without examining women's aspirations for themselves, their family, and community, development projects may miss achieving their outcomes because they are not valued by women. Using data from the abbreviated version of the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI), and qualitative interview data from women and men from minority ethnic groups in Vietnam, we show that women and men achieve similar rates of adequacy in their access to resources and decision-making as measured by the A-WEAI, and that women's aspirations for themselves and their community emphasized other valued outcomes from projects aimed at economic empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Little literature exists on the effects of childcare on maternal labor market outcomes in developing countries. • We address endogeneity issues by exploiting plausibly exogenous thresholds in children's birth months for identification. • Analyzing VHLSS data, we find sizable, positive effects of childcare on women's labor outcomes and their household income. • The effects are stronger for ethnic majority women, and areas with higher income levels. • We also find that some positive effects last after two years. Little literature currently exists on the effects of childcare use on maternal labor market outcomes in a developing country context, and the few recent studies offer mixed results. We attempt to fill these gaps by analyzing several latest rounds of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey spanning the early to mid-2010s. Addressing endogeneity issues with an instrumental variable/ regression discontinuity design estimator based on children's birth months, we find sizable and positive effects of childcare on women's own labor market outcomes and their household income and poverty status. The effects of childcare differ by women's characteristics and are stronger for women in the ethnic majority group or women with daughters. These effects are also somewhat larger for areas with higher income levels. Furthermore, we also find that some positive effects last after two years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Study in Oromia, Ethiopia, use pro-WEAI to examine empowerment impacts of a joint UN microfinance "plus" program. • In Oromia, men's and women's empowerment moved in the same direction suggesting women's empowerment is not a zero-sum game. • Continuing in the program appears to have resulted in greater trust and respect between beneficiaries and their spouses. • Indications of possible of favoritism, program disorganization, and potential spousal or community backlash are troublesome. Microfinance is thought to be an effective tool for empowering women. Yet, previous studies that evaluate microfinance programs have mixed findings. This is in part because there are large variations in the interventions that are evaluated, but also that there is not a standardized metric of empowerment that is implemented consistently throughout the literature. This study investigates the effectiveness of a joint United Nations program aimed at empowering rural women through women-run rural savings and credit cooperatives in Oromia, Ethiopia, using the project-Women's Empowerment in Agricultural Index. Building on more than a decade of studies and validation of different versions of the Women's Empowerment in Agricultural Index, the tool aims to provide a standardized and comparable metric of women's empowerment that is flexible enough to measure impacts of development projects. This study finds that the program had a positive impact on intrinsic agency for the beneficiaries with continued access to credit through the RUSACCOs between the baseline and endline. For this group of beneficiaries, the program seemed to increase the trust and respect between spouses. There is a second group of beneficiaries that appeared to have dropped out at the initial stages of the program or lost access to credit, suggesting there may have been problems with the program or possible resistance by spouses or community members. The study expands our understanding of how to measure women's empowerment impacts of development projects within the context of a smallholder agricultural households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We argue that women's political empowerment (WPE) should enhance economic growth, by facilitating technological innovation. • We find robust evidence that WPE is positively related to subsequent GDP per capita growth, across 182 countries and 221 years. • The estimated relationship is sizeable: Improvements in WPE correspond to large long-runs gains in economic development. • Consistent with our proposed mechanism, WPE is also robustly related to total factor productivity growth, a proxy for technological change We investigate whether and how women's political empowerment relates to technological change, the main driver of long-term economic growth. We argue that three aspects of empowerment – descriptive representation, civil liberties protection, and civil society participation – advance technological change and thereby economic growth through (a) increasing the number and variability of new ideas introduced in the economy and (b) improving the selection of more efficient ideas. Drawing on data from 182 countries and 221 years, we test various implications from our argument. Women's political empowerment is positively related to subsequent economic growth. This relationship persists across various model specifications and when accounting for different potential confounders. The three sub-components of empowerment are also, individually, related to growth, although not as strongly as the aggregated concept. The relationship is retained across different contexts, but is clearer for "Non-Western" countries and in earlier time periods. We also find evidence that women's political empowerment enhances technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of strengthening legal rights on the types of economic opportunities pursued. Ethiopia changed its family law, expanding wives’ access to marital property and removing restrictions to working outside the home. This reform was initially rolled out in the two chartered cities and three of Ethiopia’s nine regions, allowing for a difference-in-difference estimation of the reform’s impact. The analysis finds that women were significantly more likely to work in occupations that require work outside the home, employ more educated workers, and in paid and full-time jobs where the reform had been enacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Policymakers have invested billions of dollars over the past two decades on projects which target poverty reduction by institutional mobilization of the poor. Unfortunately, evidence on the efficacy of such projects is few and far between; this is an outcome of the complexity of these projects. We consider results from JEEViKA, a large-scale rural livelihoods program in Bihar, India. We use a retrospective survey instrument, coupled with PSM techniques to find that JEEViKA has engendered some significant results in restructuring the debt portfolio of these households; additionally, there is evidence on women’s empowerment, as measured by various dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines whether education empowers women. We exploit an exogenous variation in education induced by a longer school year in Indonesia in 1978, which fits a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We find education reduces the number of live births, increases contraceptive use, and promotes reproductive health practices. However, except for a few outcome measures, we do not find evidence that education improves women’s decision-making authority within households, asset ownership, or community participation. These results suggest that, to some extent, education does empower women in middle-income countries like Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We develop simplified indicator of nutritional empowerment the Abridged Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index (A-WENI). • We use machine learning techniques (LASSO) to reduce the number of indicators in the index from 33 to 20. • A-WENI is developed for a five-state survey in India and validated with new data from the Indian state of Maharashtra. • A-WENI reproduces well the empowerment status based on WENI and like WENI is a good predictor of nutritional outcomes. • A-WENI can be more easily incorporated into general purpose rural surveys to capture women's empowerment and nutrition. Measuring empowerment is both complicated and time consuming. A number of recent efforts have focused on how to better measure this complex multidimensional concept such that it is easy to implement. In this paper, we use machine learning techniques, specifically LASSO, using survey data from five Indian states to abbreviate a recently developed measure of nutritional empowerment, the Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI) that has 33 distinct indicators. Our preferred Abridged Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index (A-WENI) consists of 20 indicators. We validate the A-WENI via a field survey from a new context, the western Indian state of Maharashtra. We find that the 20-indicator A-WENI is both capable of reproducing well the empowerment scores and status generated by the 33-indicator WENI and predicting nutritional outcomes such as BMI and dietary diversity. Using this index, we find that in our Maharashtra sample, on average, only 35.9% of mothers of children under the age of 5 years are nutritionally empowered, whereas 77.2% of their spouses are nutritionally empowered. We also find that only 14.6% of the elderly women are nutritionally empowered. These estimates are broadly consistent with those based on the 33-indicator WENI. The A-WENI will reduce the time burden on respondents and can be incorporated in any general purpose survey conducted in rural contexts. Many of the indicators in A-WENI are often collected routinely in contemporary household surveys. Hence, capturing nutritional empowerment does not entail significant additional burden. Developing A-WENI can thus aid in an expansion of efforts to measure nutritional empowerment; this is key to understanding better the barriers and challenges women face and help identify ways in which women can improve their nutritional well-being in meaningful ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We used the novel WEFI (adapted from the WEAI) to investigate gender equity among men and women fishers, processors, and sellers at Zambia's Lake Bangweulu. • We found significant differences across genders for education, household-level hunger, decision-making input into productive activities, asset ownership, access to extension, and community leadership. • Men reported significantly higher decision-making input into four key productive activities (fishing, processing, transporting, and selling fish), including those that were not their primary occupation (e.g., selling fish). • In contrast, although 46.6% of women reported selling fish as their primary occupation, 20.1% reported little/no decision-making input into this activity. We implemented the novel Women's Empowerment in Fisheries Index (WEFI) (adapted from the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index), among men and women fisheries value chain actors at Zambia's Lake Bangweulu (N = 397). We found significant gender disparities favoring males across key indicators. Men were significantly more likely to report large decision-making input into fishing, processing, transporting, and selling fish, as well as sole ownership of important productive assets such as fishing and processing equipment, canoes, and mobile phones. Women were significantly more likely to report non-completion of any years of school and being "not at all comfortable" speaking in public on decisions affecting their fishing community, on decisions related to fishery governance, and to protest illegal/unsustainable fishing practices. Women were also significantly more likely to report that – in the past four weeks – there was no food to eat in their dwelling due to lack of resources to get food, they/another household member had gone to sleep at night hungry because there was not enough food, and they/another household member had gone a whole day and night without eating because there was not enough food. For the gender attitude questions, a sizeable proportion of both men and women disagreed that men should retain control of fishery assets, income, and decision-making. However, these opinions were not reflected in the current distribution of fishery assets, income, and decision-making autonomy. The results indicate that the WEFI is a useful quantitative instrument, as it is relatively brief while also allowing for gender-disaggregated analysis of demographic characteristics, household-level hunger, livelihoods participation, asset ownership, decision-making autonomy, and gender attitudes specific to small-scale capture fishery value chain actors. Replicating the WEFI among small-scale fisheries value chain actors in other sub-Saharan countries will provide important insights on gender equity commonalities and differences across sites/contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Analysis of the assertion of previously secured women's land rights and the effects on empowerment. • Study in two Mexican ejidos reveals that women struggle to translate legal land rights into practical land ownership, use, and control. • Local social norms and everyday gendered politics marginalize women from ejido community land governance and household level resource management. • Cases of women's leadership indicate potential to build critical mass for collective women's political participation and land control. • Case study from Mexico addresses an over-representation of studies on women's land rights based on cases from Africa. We explore how gender relations structure the assertion of formal women's land rights (WLRs), highlighting community-level land governance dynamics under individual and collective tenure arrangements. Contrary to a predominant focus on legal reforms, we document the everyday gendered politics in two Mexican ejidos – a globally renowned land tenure regime, which unifies customary and statutory systems and legally affords women and men equal rights as landowners, land users, and decision-makers. Findings explain when, how, and why female landowners practice their rights and exercise their political powers over their land. Women struggle to translate legal land rights into practical land use and control due to masculinized ejido land management; women continue to be marginalized from masculinist spaces of ejido governance and collective decision-making scenarios. Yet increasing cases of women's leadership in local land management institutions indicates the potential to build critical mass for collective participation in land politics. We encourage further attention to these issues so that the legal attainment of WLRs might be reinforced by more equitable distributions of decision-making, power, and land control. Our contribution addresses a lack of attention to the gendered politics of land control after WLRs have been legally formalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• I collect annual district level data across India to estimate the effect of MGNREGA employment on women empowerment. • I use annual district level data on women demand for microfinance through self-help groups and incidents of sexual harassment and interpersonal violence as my indicators for women empowerment. • Using a difference-in-differences model, results indicate that the demand for microfinance among women increases and violence against women decreases as MGNREGA employment increases in a district. • These results align with a broad literature on the benefits of MGNREGA, which identifies important changes to household decision-making as women earn income across India. In many countries, women do not share the same decision-making power as the men around them. This preexisting discrimination suggests an imbalance in decision-making power in the household, which makes empowering the role of women a necessity for the health and development of our communities. Studies have noted how income growth across genders can shift decision-making power in the household. To investigate income growth and its effect on women empowerment, I analyze the Mahatmas Gandhi Employment Guarantee Act of 2005, which offers guaranteed employment to rural households throughout India. Its gradual implementation in three phases over a two year period allows for the use of a difference-in-differences analysis regarding the effects of guaranteed employment by men and women across districts. I analyze two outcomes variables related to women empowerment beginning in 2002 to 2017, including the demand for microfinance and violence against women. Results show that as women take up employment in a district, the demand for credit and savings increases and violence against women decreases. Each result aligns with a broad literature that identifies how income growth and employment empowers the health, social, and economic of status of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Using a nationally representative survey from Bangladesh, we examine the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture, measured using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, and per capita calorie availability, dietary diversity, and adult body mass index (BMI). Accounting for potential endogeneity of empowerment, we find that increases in women’s empowerment are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity at the household level. Overall, household wealth, education, and occupation are more important than women’s empowerment as determinants of adult nutritional status, although negative impacts of group membership and credit on male BMI suggest that intrahousehold trade-offs may exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) measures the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector and comprises two subindexes. The first assesses empowerment of women in five domains, including (1) decisions about agricultural production, (2) access to and decisionmaking power about productive resources, (3) control of use of income, (4) leadership in the community, and (5) time allocation. The second subindex measures the percentage of women whose achievements are at least as high as men in their households and, for women lacking parity, the relative empowerment gap with respect to the male in their household. This article documents the development of the WEAI and presents pilot findings from Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Uganda. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Three studies in India and Bangladesh use pro-WEAI to examine empowerment impacts of agricultural interventions and labor market changes. • Pro-WEAI shows potential in detecting empowerment impacts within the project lifespan. • Findings suggest the need for intentionality in designing women's empowerment projects. • It is important to collect data on both women and men to track progress toward both women's empowerment and gender equality. This introduction to a special section describes how a recently developed measure, the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) can be used to assess empowerment impacts of agricultural development interventions in India and Bangladesh as well as broader changes in rural labor markets. The special section comprises three papers. The first examines the impact of membership in self-help groups in five states in rural India on women's and men's empowerment and gender equality. The second presents experimental evidence from a pilot project in Bangladesh that provided trainings in agricultural extension, nutrition behavior change communication, and gender sensitization to husbands and wives together. The third investigates changes in women's roles within the jute value chain in the Southern Delta region of Bangladesh as household members migrate out of the study area and the availability of male labor declines. Although these papers focus on Bangladesh and India, pro-WEAI can be applied to impact assessments of agricultural development projects more generally. The three papers show both the usefulness of this new measure in detecting changes in empowerment indicators within the lifespan of a project and the value of having explicit empowerment objectives in agricultural development projects. The papers also demonstrate the value of having data on both men and women so that project designers can be more intentional about including both of them and monitoring outcomes for both to promote more gender equitable outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Community-based development projects are often argued to strengthen social capital. This paper investigates the impact of a women’s empowerment program in India on trust and cooperation, using data on 2,000 households. The program significantly increases trust and stimulates contributions to educational and infrastructural community projects. The effect on informal assistance among households is less consistent. The findings suggest substantial spillovers on the wider community. Households who do not participate in the program themselves but who live in a program village are significantly more trusting and more likely to engage in collective action than households in control villages. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Impact evaluation studies routinely find that lending to women benefits their households. However, a number of them also find that this may not empower the women concerned. This seemingly paradoxical conclusion is confirmed by our study with respect to a lending program in rural India. We investigate this result by examining a combination of loan-use data and borrower-testimonies. We find that loans procured by women are often diverted into enhancing household’s assets and incomes. This combined with woman’s lack of co-ownership of family’s productive assets, we conclude, results in her disempowerment. If empowering women is a crucial objective, then the patriarchal hold on productive assets must be challenged. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Using an RCT, we assess the impacts of agriculture, nutrition, and gender interventions on women's empowerment in Bangladesh. • Single or bundled trainings on agriculture, nutrition, and gender were provided to husbands and wives jointly. • All interventions improved women's empowerment without disempowering men. • Nutrition trainings improved men's gender attitudes, particularly on women's responsibilities around cooking and childcare. • The role of engaging men and women jointly in interventions is a promising area for future research. The importance of women's roles for nutrition-sensitive agricultural projects is increasingly recognized, yet little is known about whether such projects improve women's empowerment and gender equality. We study the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) pilot project, which was implemented as a cluster-randomized controlled trial by the Government of Bangladesh. The project's treatment arms included agricultural training, nutrition behavior change communication (BCC), and gender sensitization trainings delivered to husbands and wives together – with these components combined additively, such that the impact of gender sensitization could be distinguished from that of agriculture and nutrition trainings. Empowerment was measured using the internationally-validated project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), and attitudes regarding gender roles were elicited from both men and women, to explore potentially gender-transformative impacts. Our study finds that ANGeL increased both women's and men's empowerment, raised the prevalence of households achieving gender parity, and led to small improvements in the gender attitudes of both women and men. We find significant increases in women's empowerment scores and empowerment status from all treatment arms but with no significant differences across these. We find no evidence of unintended impacts on workloads and inconclusive evidence around impacts on intimate partner violence. Our results also suggest some potential benefits of bundling nutrition and gender components with an agricultural development intervention; however, many of these benefits seem to be driven by bundling nutrition with agriculture. While we cannot assess the extent to which including men and women within the same treatment arms contributed to our results, it is plausible that the positive impacts of all treatment arms on women's empowerment outcomes may have arisen from implementation modalities that provided information to both husbands and wives when they were together. The role of engaging men and women jointly in interventions is a promising area for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We study the impacts of women's Self-help group membership on women's and men's empowerment. • We measure empowerment using two alternate indices: the A-WEAI and the Pro-WEAI. • We find that SHG membership has a significant positive impact on aggregate measures of women's empowerment. • We also find that SHG membership reduces the gap between men's and women's empowerment scores. • The impacts are driven by increase in control over income, decisionmaking over credit, and active involvement in groups. Women's groups are important rural social and financial institutions in South Asia. In India, a large majority of women's groups programs are implemented through self-help groups (SHGs). Originally designed as savings and credit groups, the role of SHGs has expanded to include creating health and nutrition awareness, improving governance, and addressing social issues related to gender- and caste-based discrimination. This paper uses panel data from 1470 rural Indian women from five states to study the impact of SHG membership on women's empowerment in agriculture, using the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and the abbreviated Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI). Because SHG membership was not randomized and women who self-select to be SHG members may be systematically different from non-members, we employ nearest neighbor matching methods to attribute the impact of SHG membership on women's empowerment in agriculture and intrahousehold inequality. Our findings suggest that SHG membership has a significant positive impact on aggregate measures of women's empowerment and reduces the gap between men's and women's empowerment scores. This improvement in aggregate empowerment is driven by improvements in women's scores, not a deterioration in men's. Greater control over income, greater decisionmaking over credit, and (somewhat mechanistically, given the treatment) greater and more active involvement in groups within the community lead to improvements in women's scores. However, impacts on other areas of empowerment are limited. The insignificant impacts on attitudes towards domestic violence and respect within the household suggest that women's groups alone may be insufficient to change deep-seated gender norms that disempower women. Our results have implications for the design and scale-up of women's group-based programs in South Asia, including the possibility that involving men is needed to change gender norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Can membership of self-help groups (SHGs), designed for enhancing livelihoods, create social capital for women? • We find that it can, even when the livelihoods are negligible. • Membership of SHGs increases personal efficacy and propensity for collective action. • Social capital generated by SHG membership is a significant positive impact as it strengthens the process of women's empowerment. The "strength of weak ties" has been established in the context of labour market outcomes, with theoretical and empirical investigation showing how weak ties lead to an increase in mobility and job opportunities. The impact of weak ties on community organisation is less well understood. We contribute to this literature by investigating if weak ties, generated via membership of livelihood programmes, can lead to the creation or enhancement of social capital. Based on data from one of the largest independent primary surveys for India, we find that participation in self-help groups had little impact on livelihoods, but led to the creation of significant social capital, as measured by indicators related to personal efficacy and collective action. We use Entropy Balancing to estimate mean effects to tackle the problem of non-random selection into the programme. In contrast to the bulk of existing evidence on livelihood programmes that is based on small samples, our large sample size and innovative survey design allow us to detect a larger number of effects with greater certainty. We argue that the social capital generated by the programme is a significant positive impact (even though the main target of the programme is to strengthen livelihoods), as it strengthens the process of women's empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The government has implemented a land titling program by the name of women and men. • Land titling contributes positively to reduce gender disparities in access to land and natural resources. • Women are highly aware of their land rights after land titling program. • Civil servants behavior and customary/patriarchic ideologies of the local people hinder the effective implementation of land titling program. • To empower women's access to land and natural resources, customary/traditional land tenure systems should be changed by formal land laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We present a theoretical model of spousal bargaining using Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA) membership. • We examine the effect of ROSCAs and exogenous micro-credit on women's empowerment in India. • ROSCA increases regular cash flow for women by 1.7 percentage points (pp) and property ownership by 3.3 pp. • We find ROSCAs to be better than exogenous micro-credit schemes in increasing women's socio-economic autonomy. • Endogenous micro-credit could be critical for financial inclusion of women in developing countries. This study examines the effects of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) on women's socio-economic freedom and autonomy at the national level in India. We compare ROSCAs to agency based micro-credit schemes and analyze their effects using nationally representative longitudinal gender-disaggregated data from 2005 to 2012. Building on a theoretical model of household savings and spousal bargaining power, we use individual fixed effects and instrumental variable regressions to test the theoretical predictions. Results show that ROSCA membership increases the likelihood of women's cash in hand for expenditure by 1.7 percentage points, say in major purchase decisions by 3.9 percentage points and fertility choice by 4.7 percentage points. These margins exceed those for exogenous micro-credit schemes and are robust to sensitivity tests. This study is the first to contrast ROSCAs with other micro-credit schemes at the national level. We propose scaling up and associating longstanding ROSCAs with self-help groups for more inclusive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ethiopia passed the Revised Family Code in 2000, which set the minimum age of marriage for girls at 18 and strengthened women's rights within marriage. • Analysis using synthetic control method and difference-in-differences helps to overcome empirical challenges of identifying impact of the law. • Implementation of the law was associated with large reductions in rates of adolescent birth, child marriage, and early sexual initiation. • Reductions were similar in rural and urban areas. • Findings indicate that strong legal frameworks for gender equality may be effective catalysts in facilitating social change on child marriage. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 2 in 5 girls are married before the age of 18. Child marriage has adverse consequences for women's physical, emotional, and social wellbeing and development. Emerging evidence has identified the importance of gender equality as a social context for shaping adolescent sexual and reproductive health norms. In 2000, Ethiopia's government passed the Revised Family Code, increasing the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18 for girls without exceptions, and strengthening women's rights within marriage regarding marital property, divorce, and employment. I evaluated the impact of the law on adolescent reproductive health indicators and newborn mortality rates. I used difference-in-differences (DID) and synthetic control methods (SCM) to compare cohort trends in Ethiopia to those in comparison countries. I show that implementation of the law was associated with a 9-percentage-point reduction in risk of adolescent birth for exposed cohorts, an 8-percentage-point reduction in child marriage, and a 10-percentage-point reduction in sexual initiation before age 18 in SCM models. There was no association of the law with changes in risk of termination of pregnancy, unmet need for contraception, infant mortality rates, or neonatal mortality rates. Results were consistent across SCM and DID models, although DID estimates were slightly attenuated. I discuss mechanisms and policy implications. The results of this study provide evidence that strong legal frameworks for gender equality may be effective catalysts in facilitating social change around child marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We study changes in rural labor supply and their association with female empowerment. • Labor scarce households see increased work by women only in traditionally female tasks. • Reduced labor supply is not associated with a reduction in gender wage gaps. • Households with female migrants have enhanced empowerment of other household women. • Male migration is not linked to enhanced outcomes for women in the short run. As a substantial portion of the rural labor force migrates to urban areas, it is commonly assumed that women could take over traditionally male tasks in agricultural production, with potentially empowering outcomes for women. We study how changes in the supply of labor may influence female labor participation and empowerment outcomes. Using a detailed panel dataset on jute producers in the delta region of Bangladesh, we test whether out-migration of household members and perceived labor shortages are associated with the share of household and hired labor performed by women, and women's empowerment. When a household experiences reduced household or hired labor supply, we observe a relatively larger use of female household labor, but a reduced share of female hired labor. We also find that reduced labor supply is not associated with significant reductions in gender wage gaps, or enhanced women's empowerment. These findings suggest that given existing gender norms, male and female labor are not perfect substitutes for one another, and as a result, male outmigration is not associated with improved outcomes for women in cash crop production in the short run. Our results demonstrate a need for better understanding of the role of gender in rural labor markets, particularly in contexts of rapid urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Women's decisionmaking indicators are widely used as a proxy for empowerment, though insufficient attention is given to measurement. • Using survey design experiments in three countries, we find that small differences in construction and wording of indicators matter. • These differences change how women are ranked in terms of decision making as well as evidence of program impacts. • Further measurement innovation utilizing context-specific understanding of intra-household dynamics is needed. Women's decisionmaking indicators are widely used in social science research, though insufficient attention is given to measurement issues. We interrogate variations in indicator construction using survey experiments undertaken in the context of transfer programs in Ecuador, Yemen, and Uganda. Findings show that small variations can lead to meaningful differences in how women are ranked on decisionmaking, as well as change conclusions on whether programs have significant impacts on decisionmaking. Results also raise questions as to how well indicators capture dimensions of empowerment as they are not consistently associated with measures of women's status. Finally, in the context of Uganda, results indicate that measures are susceptible to social desirability bias, however further investigation is needed to assess this potential. We conclude that choices made in indicator construction matter and in the absence of standardized guidance, current practice is ad-hoc. Further, despite the wide use of these indicators, evaluating program success on women's empowerment solely through standard decisionmaking indicators is not recommended. Finally, measurement innovation utilizing context-specific understanding of intra-household dynamics is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A historical shift in female empowerment allows us to assess whether empowered women make different financial decisions. • The distance to the former British base in Cherrapunji is used as an instrument for female empowerment. • We use self-collected data of 650 individuals living in the matrilineal state of Meghalaya, India. • Culturally empowered women spend more on welfare-enhancing goods, but this comes at the expense of savings. • Higher investments in human capital and lower savings have important implications for long-run economic growth. This paper looks at household consumption and financial decisions made in a matrilineal society where women are traditionally the household financial managers. This culture was strongly altered by the British in the mid-19th century through Christian missionaries who proclaimed that the role of the household manager is ascribed to men and not to women. Using self-collected data from 650 individuals in the matrilineal state of Meghalaya, India, and exploring households' distance to the historical Protestant base in Cherrapunji, we find evidence that households in which women are empowered spend more on welfare-enhancing goods, such as food, but are less likely to have savings left at the end of the month. Our paper contributes to the literature by investigating how a historical shift in female empowerment, mostly driven by cultural norms, can have long-term effects on financial decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Well-being outcomes are often best when spouses agree that women make decisions. • Nearly half of couples across Africa disagree on who makes household decisions. • This disagreement has a direction and captures a distinct facet of women's power. • Women taking (vs. being given) power is associated with benefits, but also risks. • These findings shine new light on our understanding of women's empowerment. This paper examines women's power relative to that of their husbands in 23 Sub-Saharan African countries to determine how it affects women's health, reproductive outcomes, children's health and children's education. The analysis uses a novel measure of women's empowerment that is closely linked to classical theories of power, built from spouses' often-conflicting reports of intrahousehold decision-making. We find, as in previous literature, that well-being outcomes for women and children are often best in scenarios where the woman's power is recognized by her husband. We also find that women taking power—assigning themselves more decision-making power than their husbands do to them—is better for her reproductive health and children's health, but is worse for emotional violence, compared to being given power by their husbands. The results show the conceptual and analytical value of intrahousehold contention over decision-making and expand the breadth of evidence on the importance of women's power for economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Deepens understanding of how partnerships affect development and gender security. • Considers the role of popular engagement in confronting conflict-related sexual violence. • Identifies how market-based measures target women to support women's causes. • Offers case study of different ways of addressing CRSV in Congo. • Elucidates implications from the fusing of neoliberalism and feminism when advocating for women's empowerment. This article examines partnerships to support development causes related to women, specifically in the area of gender security. Drawing from feminist international political economy and feminist security studies, this research investigates the gendered ways in which configurations led by NGOs and businesses use cause-related marketing models to build solidarity among women to address conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Through the concept of sisterhood partnerships , this article theorizes the nature of the relationships formed between female consumers in the North and female recipients in the South. A discussion of three sisterhood partnerships that address CRSV in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will reveal the specific and gendered ways in which businesses fuse neoliberal agendas in development and feminism by linking female consumers to female beneficiaries through notions of solidarity and empowerment. We argue that while sisterhood partnerships may bring the benefits of raising awareness and funds for CRSV, the reliance on consumer strategies for Northern audiences and economic empowerment models for Southern beneficiaries valorize individual actions that fail to effect broader social change. At stake, the notion that feminist "sisterhoods" between north and south are being co-opted by corporations and marketed in de-politicized ways that fail to address systemic concerns related to gender security and women's emancipation. We find that these examples of "sisterhood" partnerships exhibit superficial engagement with local and global politics, empower their consumers and beneficiaries in limited ways, and draw upon gendered tropes of advocacy and charitable engagement while failing to address the collective and protection needs of a vulnerable population. This article contributes to surfacing neoliberal trends in development and feminism that hold implications for gender security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]