Empowering women through education and influence: An evaluation of the Indian Mahila Samakhya program

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 6347

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation ; Education and Inequality ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination ; Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration ; Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
• Subject: women's empowerment ; community-level interventions ; impact evaluation ; India ; Frauenpolitik ; Frauenbildung ; Wirkungsanalyse ; Berufliche Integration ; Gemeinde ; Indien

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Kandpal, Eeshani ; Baylis, Kathy ; Arends-Kuenning, Mary P.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/58722
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-201205026130
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET