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Women's Empowerment and the Creation of Social Capital in Indian Villages

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  • Janssens, Wendy

Abstract

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.

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  • Janssens, Wendy, 2010. "Women's Empowerment and the Creation of Social Capital in Indian Villages," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 974-988, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:38:y:2010:i:7:p:974-988
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    2. Anu Kasmel & Pernille Tanggaard, 2011. "Conceptualizing Organizational Domains of Community Empowerment through Empowerment Evaluation in Estonian Communities," Societies, MDPI, vol. 1(1), pages 1-27, June.
    3. Suwastika Naidu, 2016. "Does Human Development Influence Women’s Labour Force Participation Rate? Evidences from the Fiji Islands," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 1067-1084, July.
    4. Kandpal, Eeshani & Baylis, Kathy & Arends-Kuenning, Mary P., 2012. "Empowering Women through Education and Influence: An Evaluation of the Indian Mahila Samakhya Program," IZA Discussion Papers 6347, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Kandpal, Eeshani & Baylis, Katherine R. & Arends-Kuenning, Mary, 2012. "Measuring the Effect of Education and Influence on Female Employment and Empowerment: Evidence from India," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 123705, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Story, William T. & Tura, Halkeno & Rubin, Jason & Engidawork, Belaynesh & Ahmed, Anwar & Jundi, Feysel & Iddosa, Teshale & Abrha, Teweldebrhan Hailu, 2020. "Social capital and disaster preparedness in Oromia, Ethiopia: An evaluation of the “Women Empowered” approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).
    7. Cho, Seo-Young, 2016. "Does Gender Equality Promote Social Trust? An Empirical Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 175-187.
    8. Vijaya Kumar Murty & Sukarmina Singh Shankar, 2020. "Towards a Scalable Architecture for Smart Villages: The Discovery Phase," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-16, September.
    9. Kandpal, Eeshani & Baylis, Kathy, 2019. "The social lives of married women: Peer effects in female autonomy and investments in children," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 26-43.
    10. Rebecca Gordon, 2020. "Transformative Grassroots Leadership: Understanding the Role of Rojiroti’s Women Leaders in Supporting Social Change," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(4), pages 180-190.
    11. Mishra, Khushbu & Sam, Abdoul G., 2016. "Does Women’s Land Ownership Promote Their Empowerment? Empirical Evidence from Nepal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 360-371.
    12. Sundström, Aksel & Paxton, Pamela & Wang, Yi-Ting & Lindberg, Staffan I., 2017. "Women’s Political Empowerment: A New Global Index, 1900–2012," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 321-335.
    13. Bleck, Jaimie & Michelitch, Kristin, 2018. "Is women’s empowerment associated with political knowledge and opinions? Evidence from rural Mali," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 299-323.

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