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• We study the takeup of an intervention designed to increase women's economic empowerment. • Lower socio-economic status and household gender norms predict refusal of the intervention. • We employ a randomized-controlled trial to test the impact of a couple's workshop on refusal. • The workshop decreases refusal and mitigates takeup disadvantage related to gender norms. We study the take‐up of an intervention designed to increase women's economic empowerment among sugarcane farmers in Uganda. We find that lower socioeconomic status and household gender norms both predict a couple's refusal of the intervention. We also randomly assign couples to a workshop that aims to increase communication and gender balance in the household and find that couples invited to the workshop were less likely to refuse the subsequently offered empowerment intervention. Moreover, the workshop was effective at addressing sources of disadvantage that arise from household gender norms and division of labor, and less effective at addressing refusal rates associated with socioeconomic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]