Scaling up Innovations for Reducing and Redistributing Women and Girls Unpaid Care work in rural Tanzania

Our project includes three integrated intervention components. The first addresses the time and labor burden of water collection; the second builds economic skills and opportunities for women; and the third targets social norms and behaviors around gender roles. All interventions
are delivered in partnership with local organizations (the Economic and Social Research Foundation – ESRF, Relief to Development Society – REDESO, and Women’s Support Project – WSP ) and government stakeholders, to ensure cultural appropriateness
and sustainability.

Intervention 1: Rainwater Harvesting Technology (Underground Water Tanks)
The first intervention consists of the construction of communal underground rainwater harvesting tanks to improve household water access. The intervention is led by REDESO and implemented in partnership with communities.

Intervention 2: Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Training
The second intervention aims to convert time savings from reduced water collection into improved livelihoods by strengthening women’s and girls’ economic skills and agency. It is implemented by the WSP and designed as a gender-sensitive, transformative curriculum
tailored to rural Kishapu.

Intervention 3: Norm Change Intervention
This intervention is also implemented by WSP and it is more focused on addressing gender norms and intra-household dynamics that underpin the unequal distribution of unpaid care work. It is based on the Bandebereho model, a gender-transformative curriculum originally developed in Rwanda to engage men in caregiving and promote healthy, equitable relationships.

2025-01-30

2026-06-30

Time Use & Water Access (primary focus for T1)
- Time collecting water (hrs/day)
- Total unpaid domestic work (hrs/day)
- Water access

Economic Empowerment (primary focus for T2)
- Labor force participation
- Earnings/profits
- Savings & credit

Gender Norms & Agency (primary for T2)
- Men’s participation in domestic tasks
- Attitudes on gender roles
- Women’s decision-making power

- Entrepreneurial self-efficacy/aspirations
- IPV/conflict (exploratory)
- Couple communication/support

The study is conducted in Kishapu District, Shinyanga region, a rural, semi-arid area characterized by frequent droughts and water scarcity. Kishapu has 117 villages; in consultation with local authorities, we defined criteria to select a sample of villages that would be eligible for the interventions. We focused on villages with the greatest need for water access and suitable conditions for the rainwater harvesting technology.

Inclusion criteria included
• Severe water scarcity: Village is in a dry area with pronounced water shortages, and households typically travel long distances for water
• Distance to water: The average distance to the nearest reliable water source is at least 20 kilometers
• Existing community groups: Ideally, the village has an existing social group structure encompassing roughly 12 households that could collaborate on managing a water tank
• The village is not in the district government water supply masters plan

We identified a pool of 10 villages that met the criteria and each village we recruited four (04) social groups. These 10 study villages are spread across several wards of Kishapu District.

We employ a cluster-randomized controlled trial with a nested cross-randomization to evaluate two interventions: T1: Rainwater harvesting tanks and T2: Entrepreneurship + Norm Change Training.

Water intervention (T1): In each study village, four social groups were identified (12 households per group). From these, two groups were randomly assigned to receive a rainwater harvesting tank (T1), while the other two groups served as controls (no tank).

Training intervention (T2): Among the groups assigned to T1, we further randomized one group to receive the Entrepreneurship + Norm Change Training package and the other to remain without training. The same procedure was applied among the two non-water groups: one group received Training, the other remained a pure control.

Not available

The randomization was done in the office by researchers after conducting baseline data collection. Randomization was done using STATA with a specified seed.

The unit of randomization for all treatments is the social group (with average of 12 households) within each village.

Yes

40 groups (clusters) with 12 households each, equally split across four arms (10 groups/120 households per arm).

We expect to have a total of 480 households as the total number of observations

Water Only (T1) 10 groups (120 households); Water + Training (T1+T2) 10 groups (120 households); Training Only (T2) 10 groups (120 households); Pure Control 10 groups (120 households)

With equal allocation and village fixed effects (leveraging within-village randomization), MDEs for standardized outcomes are expected around 0.32–0.40 SD for T1 and T2 under typical ICC=0.05 and 5% alpha 80% power