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Empowering Women through Education and Influence: An Evaluation of the Indian Mahila Samakhya Program

Author

Listed:
  • Kandpal, Eeshani

    (World Bank)

  • Baylis, Kathy

    (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

  • Arends-Kuenning, Mary P.

    (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Abstract

This paper shows that participation in a community-level female empowerment program in India significantly increases participants' physical mobility, political participation, and access to employment. The program provides support groups, literacy camps, adult education classes, and vocational training. We use truncation-corrected matching and instrumental variables on primary data to disentangle the program's mechanisms, separately considering its effect on women who work, and those who do not work but whose reservation wage is increased by participation. We also find significant spillover effects on non-participants relative to women in untreated districts.

Suggested Citation

  • 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).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6347
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. M. Mehrab Bakhtiar & Gautam Bastian & Markus Goldstein, 2022. "Business Training and Mentoring: Experimental Evidence from Women-Owned Microenterprises in Ethiopia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 71(1), pages 151-183.
    3. Ruthbah, Ummul, 2020. "Does lower fertility empower women? Evidence from rural Bangladesh," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).
    4. Martinho, Vítor João Pereira Domingues, 2012. "Effects on women empowerment of awareness raising," EconStor Preprints 67517, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    5. Nishant Chadha & Soma Wadhwa, 2018. "Impact of an Adult Literacy Programme on the Personal and Public Lives of Women," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 13(1), pages 82-111, April.
    6. Kafle, Kashi & Michelson, Hope & Winter-Nelson, Alex, 2016. "Does she have a say? The impact of livestock transfer and associated training on women's empowerment: Evidence from Zambia," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 236271, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    women's empowerment; community-level interventions; impact evaluation; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

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