Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India

Diva Dhar; Tarun Jain; Seema Jayachandran

doi:10.1257/AER.20201112

Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India

Diva Dhar, Tarun Jain, Seema Jayachandran^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

90 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper evaluates an intervention in India that engaged adolescent girls and boys in classroom discussions about gender equality for two years, aiming to reduce their support for societal norms that restrict women’s and girls’ opportunities. Using a randomized controlled trial, we find that the program made attitudes more supportive of gender equality by 0.18 standard deviations, or, equivalently, converted 16 percent of regressive attitudes. When we resurveyed study participants two years after the intervention had ended, the effects had persisted. The program also led to more gender-equal self-reported behavior, and we find weak evidence that it affected two revealed-preference measures.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	899-927
Number of pages	29
Journal	American Economic Review
Volume	112
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1257/AER.20201112
State	Published - Mar 2022

Funding

* Dhar: Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford (email: [email protected]); Jain: Economics Area, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (email: [email protected]); Jayachandran: Department of Economics, Northwestern University (email: [email protected]). Esther Duflo was the coeditor for this article. We thank our partners, Breakthrough and the Government of Haryana, for collaborating on the project. We also thank Sachet Bangia, Maaike Bijker, Srijana Chandrasekhar, Rachna Nag Chowdhuri, Alejandro Favela, Jacob Gosselin, Vrinda Kapoor, Vrinda Kapur, Lydia Kim, Akhila Kovvuri, Saumya Mathur, Suanna Oh, Priyanka Sarda, Ananta Seth, Niki Shrestha, Anantika Singh, and Rachita Vig for excellent research assistance and research management, the J-PAL survey staff for collecting the data, and Alice Eagly for helpful suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was submitted for prepublication reanalysis to the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and we thank Andreas de Barros for conducting the code replication. We gratefully acknowledge the J-PAL PostPrimary Education Initiative, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who funded the project. We also benefited from small grants from the International Growth Centre and Northwestern Global Poverty Research Lab. “The trial was registered in the AEA RCT Registry as study #AEARCTR-0000072 (Dhar, Jain, and Jayachandran 2014) and received institutional review board approval from Northwestern University (STU00081053) and the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IRB00007107). The data and code for the study are available through the AEA Data and Code Repository (Dhar, Jain, and Jayachandran 2021).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1257/AER.20201112

Cite this

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title = "Reshaping Adolescents{\textquoteright} Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India",

abstract = "This paper evaluates an intervention in India that engaged adolescent girls and boys in classroom discussions about gender equality for two years, aiming to reduce their support for societal norms that restrict women{\textquoteright}s and girls{\textquoteright} opportunities. Using a randomized controlled trial, we find that the program made attitudes more supportive of gender equality by 0.18 standard deviations, or, equivalently, converted 16 percent of regressive attitudes. When we resurveyed study participants two years after the intervention had ended, the effects had persisted. The program also led to more gender-equal self-reported behavior, and we find weak evidence that it affected two revealed-preference measures.",

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note = "Funding Information: * Dhar: Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford (email: [email protected]); Jain: Economics Area, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (email: [email protected]); Jayachandran: Department of Economics, Northwestern University (email: [email protected]). Esther Duflo was the coeditor for this article. We thank our partners, Breakthrough and the Government of Haryana, for collaborating on the project. We also thank Sachet Bangia, Maaike Bijker, Srijana Chandrasekhar, Rachna Nag Chowdhuri, Alejandro Favela, Jacob Gosselin, Vrinda Kapoor, Vrinda Kapur, Lydia Kim, Akhila Kovvuri, Saumya Mathur, Suanna Oh, Priyanka Sarda, Ananta Seth, Niki Shrestha, Anantika Singh, and Rachita Vig for excellent research assistance and research management, the J-PAL survey staff for collecting the data, and Alice Eagly for helpful suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was submitted for prepublication reanalysis to the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and we thank Andreas de Barros for conducting the code replication. We gratefully acknowledge the J-PAL PostPrimary Education Initiative, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who funded the project. We also benefited from small grants from the International Growth Centre and Northwestern Global Poverty Research Lab. “The trial was registered in the AEA RCT Registry as study #AEARCTR-0000072 (Dhar, Jain, and Jayachandran 2014) and received institutional review board approval from Northwestern University (STU00081053) and the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IRB00007107). The data and code for the study are available through the AEA Data and Code Repository (Dhar, Jain, and Jayachandran 2021). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 American Economic Association. All rights reserved.",

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Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India

Abstract

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ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India

Abstract

Funding

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

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Data and Code for: Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India

Cite this