How Does Girls’ Empowerment Affect Boys? Experimental Evidence from Kenya

• In Event: Women's Political and Civic Participation

Abstract

Gender disparities are pervasive, especially throughout the developing world. To address this problem, policymakers invest heavily in female-focused empowerment campaigns. While research suggests that such campaigns can be effective at changing views and behaviors of girls and women who are directly exposed, little is known about how such campaigns affect boys and men. On the one hand, the benefits of female-focused campaigns may spill over to men and turn them into champions of gender equality. On the other hand, female-focused campaigns may harden gender lines and create backlash among boys who feel left out. Understanding these effects is important, because men tend to be powerful gatekeepers in gender-conservative societies who can block or accelerate gender-norm change. In collaboration with a British non-profit organization and their local partners, we conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial to assess the causal impact of a multi-media girls’ empowerment program on attitudes and behaviors related to decision-making in relationships and gender empowerment among teenagers in Kenya. We randomly assign 426 out of 996 teenage girls to participate in eight sessions of a social club that provides extensive exposure to empowerment content. We analyze the direct effects of the campaign on participating girls as well as spillover effects on other teenage boys and girls who live in the same households. Our results shed light on how conservative gender norms are maintained and how they can be shifted.

Authors

• Uchechi Shirley Anaduaka, Hong Kong Baptist University

• Anna Maria Wilke, New York University

• Selina Hofstetter, Tecnológico de Monterrey

• Tinghua Yu, Birkbeck, University of London