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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]

• 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]

• 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]

• 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]

• 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]