Women’s Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa

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Women in developing countries are disempowered: high youth unemployment, early marriage
and childbearing interact to limit their investments into human capital and enforce
dependence on men. We evaluate a multi-faceted policy intervention attempting to jumpstart
adolescent women’s empowerment in Uganda, a context in which 60% of the population
are aged below twenty. The intervention aims to relax human capital constraints that adolescent
girls face by simultaneously providing them vocational training and information on
sex, reproduction and marriage. We …nd that four years post-intervention, adolescent girls
in treated communities are 48% more likely to engage in income generating activities, an
impact almost entirely driven by their greater engagement in self-employment. Teen pregnancy
falls by 34%, and early entry into marriage/cohabitation falls by 62%. Strikingly, the
share of girls reporting sex against their will drops by close to a third and aspired ages at
which to marry and start childbearing move forward. The results highlight the potential of
a multi-faceted program that provides skills transfers as a viable and cost-e¤ective policy
intervention to improve the economic and social empowerment of adolescent girls over a four year horizon.

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: ., 2017

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English

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