Vocational Training for Teens Provides Greater Female Economic Empowerment?

Responsible researcher: Eduarda Miller de Figueiredo

Article title: WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT IN ACTION: EVIDENCE FROM A RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIAL IN AFRICA

Article authors: Oriana Bandiera, Niklas Buehren, Robin Burgess, Markus Goldstein, Selim Gulesci. Imran Rasul and Munshi Sulaiman

Location of intervention: Uganda

Sample size: 5,966 adolescent girls

Sector: Gender

Intervention Type: Effects of Vocational and Life Training for Girls

Variables of interest: Vocational and life skills

Evaluation method: Experimental Evaluation (RCT)

Policy Problem

Female empowerment has three dimensions: political, economic and total control over their bodies. In some countries women have achieved independence, but in some others economic and reproductive empowerment shows slow evolution. In these countries, the female labor force is extremely low and the majority marry and procreate at a much younger age compared to their contemporaries in developed nations (World Bank, 2006; Jayachandran, 2015). This is because women did not have access to contraceptive methods to control reproduction and facilitate investment in human capital, in addition to the fact that in non-developed countries violence against women is more acceptable and prevalent (Doepke, Tertilt and Voena, 2012; Jayachandran , 2015).

The question of this situation is whether the accumulation of female human capital can put them on a trajectory towards equality or whether these circumstances discussed above are maintained by cultural norms that would be difficult to change/relax through public policies (Campo, Jayachandran and Pande, 2010).

Assessment Context

The importance of targeting adolescents is due to the fact that the lack of opportunities in the skilled labor market at the end of adolescence can reduce the incentives for girls to invest in their human capital, leading to early marriage and pregnancy, increasing dependence on men. (Jensen, 2012).

Public policy makers in developing countries make it a priority to help young women gain training, as the number of young people and, consequently, youth unemployment are growing in these countries. This is a reality in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Uganda, which has one of the lowest median ages, with women having a fertility rate three to four times higher, mainly in the 15-19 age group.

            In this way, the program aims to provide:

1. i Vocational skills to enable girls to begin small-scale income-generating activities;
2. ii Life skills to build knowledge, enabling girls to make informed choices about sex, reproduction and marriage.

The program has proven to be transportable across countries, with modifications for local contexts: it began in 1993 in Bangladesh, then moved to South Asia and East Africa, and is now in post-conflict countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. In Uganda, the program had positive impacts, which will be discussed below, and proved to be beneficial from a cost-benefit perspective.

Policy Details

The intervention of the Adolescent Empowerment and Livelihoods program, ELA ^[1] , takes place in so-called “Adolescent Development Clubs” ^[2] instead of schools, making it possible to reach students who have dropped out of school. Furthermore, this space gives girls the opportunity to meet and socialize with other teenagers, free from the pressure exerted by men.

The clubs are open five afternoons a week, after school hours, and their activities are led by a mentor, who was selected from within the community and is slightly older than the teenagers participating in the program. The choice of mentors, who are a little older than the girls, is because the literature shows that interventions of this style at school have limited impact because young people do not feel comfortable discussing such topics with teachers (Ross, Dick and Ferguson, 2006).

Eligibility for ELA is based on gender and age, i.e. girls between 14 and 20 years old. However, some girls outside this age group participate in the program and receive vocational training. During the first two years, vocational and life skills are provided. Afterwards, the teenagers are free to use the club as a safe social space, but without receiving treatment.

Vocational skills include courses in hairdressing, tailoring, computing, agriculture, poultry farming and small business operations, enabling income generation through small-scale businesses. All courses are complemented by financial education courses covering budgeting, finance and accounting skills. Life skills include education sessions on sexual life and reproductive health, menstruation, pregnancy, family planning and rape. A final class provides girls with legal knowledge on women's issues such as child marriage and violence against women.

Methodology Details

The 1,200 clubs created for ELA were randomly distributed across Ugandan communities, from which the authors chose 10 to carry out the impact assessment. The randomization unit will be the community that corresponds to small neighborhoods, thus, the research has 100 treatment communities and 50 control communities.

In this way, a representative sample of 5,966 adolescents was tracked at the beginning (March-June/2008), in the middle (March-June/2010) and at the end (May-July/2012), making it possible to analyze the long-term dynamic impacts of the program. Each survey was conducted in person to capture (i) the vocational skills component, (ii) the life skills component, and (iii) other margins, which include investments in education, time use, expenditures, and other measures of empowerment economic and social.

The authors performed estimates for the Intention-to-Treat Effect (ITT) ^[1] , using an OLS to estimate the outcome for adolescent i in community j , for the middle (2010) and end (2012) analyzes of the intervention.

Results

Estimation of self-reported entrepreneurial skills relative to the initial survey shows an increase of 8% in the average survey and 3% in the final survey. Thus, the results demonstrate that girls in the treatment group perceive themselves as having better entrepreneurial skills, capable of managing a small business, than girls in the control community.

The results also suggested that girls in the treatment group were 67% more likely to engage in any income-generating activity in the 2010 survey, and 48% in the 2012 survey. Therefore, there are improvements in the female workforce, particularly through engaging in self-employment. In terms of income, treated girls achieved a 39% increase in the average survey. Therefore, the ELA program has significant impacts on strengthening the economic empowerment of adolescents.

In relation to early pregnancy, the ELA program demonstrated that treated girls are 2.7 percentage points less likely to have a child compared to girls in the control group. This represents a 24% drop in fertility rates. For delayed marriage, the program also had an interesting impact, as treated girls were 53% less likely to be married.

In terms of sexual behavior, girls in the treatment group showed a 30% reduction in the probability of having sex without wanting to, as well as an increase of 13 percentage points in the use of condoms during sexual intercourse.

Therefore, all observed results demonstrate a positive and significant impact of the ELA program along the three dimensions of female empowerment: political, economic and control over their bodies.

Public Policy Lessons

The lack of opportunity in the future job market may reduce girls' incentive to invest in their human capital, leading to early marriage and, consequently, early pregnancy. Thereby increasing their dependence on older men. Thus, programs that provide vocational skills and life skills have demonstrated that adolescent girls engage in economic activities and postpone procreation and marriage, impacting their life trajectory.

Reference

BANDIERA, Oriana et al. Women's empowerment in action: evidence from a randomized control trial in Africa. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol. 12, no. 1, p. 210-59, 2020.

^[1] Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents

^[2] “Adolescent Development Clubs”

^[3] Intent-to-treat (ITT).