Intervention(s)
In both treatment and control communities, we will recruit previously unaffiliated women to join women’s action committees (WACs) to be trained by ActionAid Nigeria: 1/3 of WACs (control group) will receive basic training in civic education; 1/3 (treatment group 1, or T1) will receive civic education training in addition to intensive training in advocacy, leadership, and organizing (intended to help them understand the grievances they have in common; increase their shared identify as women; identify common needs and goals; understand the benefits of coordinated action; learn about local decision-making processes; identify points of influence; communicate effectively with decision-makers; and discuss feasible changes in the local context); and 1/3 (treatment group 2, or T2) will receive the same trainings as T1 and their husbands will be invited to participate in a parallel men's training focused on men's allyship in women's empowerment and gender equality (conferring an understanding of gender concepts; highlighting the importance of women's rights to societal development and the role and contribution of women in society; and underscoring the ways in which men can support women).
The intervention will begin with an initial "burn-in" meeting, identical in content and length (just over 3 hours) across all study communities (T1, T2, and control). The burn-in meeting will be used to finalize the study's experimental sample and deliver basic civil education and political information in a uni-directional way (i.e., not through engaging group activities). By making all study participants (including the control group) attend this meeting and indicate interest in receiving similar length trainings over the next 5 months, we weed out from the study individuals who are not interested in trainings or who may be generally unable to attend trainings outside of their homes for other reasons and thus increase the likelihood that our control group is comparable to our T1 and T2 groups.
Burn-in meetings will be used to screen women (prior to delivery of training information) to ensure they meet study participation criteria and to gather contact information for follow-up surveys and details on the size of the WAC (envisioned to be 13 in all cases, but we anticipate some small variance). Burn-in meetings will also inform participants that they may be invited to attend future WAC meetings in their community.
Specifically, the burn-in meeting will provide information that is often necessary in order to participate in communities: background on the national identity of Nigerians (flag, coat of arms, national anthem and prayer, and how to promote national identity); the Nigerian constitution; participation opportunities (e.g., locations and periodicity/ timing of community meetings); and the identities of local leaders, as well as their responsibilities and contact information; government structures at different levels and how policy processes operate.
Women's trainings in T1 and T2 will be administered via five facilitated group meetings, where each meeting will be just over 3 hours, following the burn-in meeting by co-gender and co-ethnic (i.e., a woman of the same ethnicity) facilitators. Facilitators will be recruited from geographically proximate communities to the study site to ensure that in addition to being fluent in both Yoruba and English, they are familiar with local dialects and comfortable working closely with rural communities. In general, facilitators will be teachers, social workers, health workers, and other professionals already living and working in the area. Women's empowerment can be a sensitive topic in rural areas with conservative gender norms, and ensuring that the facilitators can draw from relevant and contextually-specific examples and can become trusted participants in challenging conversations is essential to the success of the treatment.
To increase women’s sense of self- and group-efficacy through WACs, the trainings are intended to confer women participants with leadership and advocacy skills as well as a strong group identity with other members of their WAC whom they could rely on for support or work with to plan economic or community development endeavors to improve their circumstances.
The five treatment meetings will be organized around discussion-based and experiential learning activities, alongside a series of take-home assignments to connect each meeting and encourage participants to continue thinking about the contents of the sessions in between meetings. This homework will further be discussed at the start of the subsequent meeting, offering women a chance to share and jointly reflect on training content.
Men's trainings (T2 only) will underscore that women's empowerment is not a zero-sum game, and that it can benefit families as well as the quality of communities and policies. They will also educate men on how to effectively support women's empowerment. Women in WACs assigned to T2 will receive the same five facilitated additional WAC meetings (following the burn-in meeting) described for T1, but they will additionally have their husbands be offered a men's training, which is also comprised of five meetings of just over 3 hours each. As with T1, the facilitators will be co-ethnic and co-gender. As with the women's trainings, the five treatment meetings will be organized around discussion-based and experiential learning activities, alongside a series of take-home assignments to connect each meeting and encourage participants to continue thinking about the contents of the sessions in between meetings. Note, however, that no husbands will be invited to attend the burn-in meetings.
Additional details on the intervention can be found in the attached analysis plan.