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Field
Abstract
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Before
This study examines how local elites respond in the face of two interventions: a women’s training designed to strengthen women’s sense of collective efficacy and leadership skills, and a complementary training program for women’s husbands, designed to encourage and support them to become champions of women’s voice and agency. The study utilized a three-arm randomized control trial (RCT) carried out in Ogun, Osun, and Oyo states of southwest Nigeria in 2023 to analyze elite responsiveness to hypothetical petitions presented by both women and men on key community development issues. Our first intervention (treatment group 1 (T1)), the women’s training intervention, provided intensive instruction in leadership, organizing, and advocacy. It was designed to reduce psychological barriers to women’s political participation by raising women’s sense of collective efficacy and conferring skills to help women overcome these barriers. This intervention was part of a coordinated set of field experiments in five countries—collectively known as Metaketa V. Our second intervention (T2), the men’s training intervention, emphasized the benefits of women’s political participation for families and communities and focused on equipping men to be advocates for women’s empowerment and gender equality in public spaces—underscoring that women’s empowerment is not a zero-sum game.
Local leaders play an important role in facilitating women’s participation in civic and political affairs and their access to essential public services, which is the central focus of this pre-analysis plan. As part of the Metaketa V study, we surveyed community leaders (primarily called Baales) in both control and treatment (T1 and T2) communities. Baales are social and political elites within their communities; they are always male, the Baale position is informal rather than elected, and they act as the central figurehead in the community. As part of a previously-registered pre-analysis plan, we asked these leaders to evaluate the level and quality of women’s formal and informal political participation in terms of clarity, relevance, and coordination. We also measured their responsiveness to and awareness of women’s priorities by asking them to identify the policy sectors prioritized by women in their communities. In this study, we go beyond these initial measures to further assess how T1 and T2 affect local leaders’ responsiveness to women. To do so, we embedded a conjoint experiment within a January – February 2024 endline survey administered to local leaders. This approach enables us to test whether and how the gender of a hypothetical petitioner, the issue the petitioner raises, and the demographic within the community that would be affected (either women in the community, or the entire community) influence a leader’s prioritization of community petitions. The conjoint approach also enables us to test whether it makes a difference if petitioners approach local leaders individually or as part of a group. Additionally, we collected extensive data on leaders’ personal beliefs and perceptions of social norms related to gender attitudes and gender equality, allowing us to conduct more exploratory work on potential downstream effects of our trainings on leaders’ own gender attitudes and perceived gender norms.
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After
This study examines how local elites respond in the face of two interventions: a women’s training designed to strengthen women’s sense of collective efficacy and leadership skills and a complementary training program for women’s husbands, designed to encourage and support them to become champions of women’s voice and agency. The study utilized a three-arm randomized control trial (RCT) carried out in Ogun, Osun, and Oyo states of southwest Nigeria in 2023 to analyze elite responsiveness to hypothetical petitions presented by both women and men on key community development issues. Our first intervention (treatment group 1 (T1)), the women’s training intervention, provided intensive instruction in leadership, organizing, and advocacy. It was designed to reduce psychological barriers to women’s political participation by raising women’s sense of collective efficacy and conferring skills to help women overcome these barriers. This intervention was part of a coordinated set of field experiments in five countries—collectively known as Metaketa V. Our second intervention (T2), the men’s training intervention, emphasized the benefits of women’s political participation for families and communities and focused on equipping men to be advocates for women’s empowerment and gender equality in public spaces—underscoring that women’s empowerment is not a zero-sum game.
Local leaders play an important role in facilitating women’s participation in civic and political affairs and their access to essential public services, which is the central focus of this pre-analysis plan. As part of the Metaketa V study, we surveyed community leaders (primarily called Baales) in both control and treatment (T1 and T2) communities. Baales are social and political elites within their communities; they are always male, the Baale position is informal rather than elected, and they act as the central figurehead in the community. As part of a previously-registered pre-analysis plan, we asked these leaders to evaluate the level and quality of women’s formal and informal political participation in terms of clarity, relevance, and coordination. We also measured their responsiveness to and awareness of women’s priorities by asking them to identify the policy sectors prioritized by women in their communities. In this study, we go beyond these initial measures to further assess how T1 and T2 affect local leaders’ responsiveness to women. To do so, we embedded a conjoint experiment within a January – February 2024 endline survey administered to local leaders. This approach enables us to test whether and how the gender of a hypothetical petitioner, the issue the petitioner raises, and the demographic within the community that would be affected (either women in the community, or the entire community) influence a leader’s prioritization of community petitions. The conjoint approach also enables us to test whether it makes a difference if petitioners approach local leaders individually or as part of a group. Additionally, we collected extensive data on leaders’ personal beliefs and perceptions of social norms related to gender attitudes and gender equality, allowing us to conduct more exploratory work on potential downstream effects of our trainings on leaders’ own gender attitudes and perceived gender norms.
In 2026, we amended this registry to add an additiional pre-analysis plan document to pre-register the analysis of a follow-up elite survey conducted approximately 2.5 years after the original intervention ended, made possible by additional funding secured for long-term follow-up. The amendment extends the original study's analysis of elite responsiveness to examine whether the effects of the two interventions on local leaders' behaviors and attitudes have persisted, attenuated, or strengthened over time. It additionally introduces two new conjoint experiments that were not part of the original study design, measuring elite sensitivity to the framing of women-led projects and to public versus private costs of endorsing women's empowerment initiatives.
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