Empowering Women at Scale

Last registered on July 01, 2025

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Empowering Women at Scale

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0016310

Initial registration date

June 29, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

June 30, 2025, 6:16 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

July 01, 2025, 9:42 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

India

Region

Madhya Pradesh

Primary Investigator

Name

Lisa Ho

Affiliation

MIT

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Rohini Pande

PI Affiliation

Yale University

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Charity Troyer Moore

PI Affiliation

Ohio State University

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Erica Field

PI Affiliation

Duke University

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Urmi Bhattacharya

PI Affiliation

Inclusion Economics India Centre

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Simone Schaner

PI Affiliation

University of Southern California

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2025-02-04

End date

2026-04-30

Keywords

Gender, Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

Research has shown that increasing women's access to, and control over, potential income increases her financial autonomy and participation in economic activities. In settings with conservative gender norms, this activity can also reshape restrictive attitudes and increase markers of female empowerment (Field et al 2021). While the individual- and household-level impacts of such an initiative are clear, the consequences of this policy when implemented at-scale -- across entire markets and communities -- are less clear: Encouraging women's economic control and access to economic opportunities could increase local economic activity and liberalize restrictive norms, and direct impacts could also spillover onto untreated women. In addition, an at-scale approach could also change market wages and job availability and impact men's economic opportunities. It is possible this could cause increased resistance by community members, especially men, towards greater economic activity by women.

In this project, we examine the consequences of such a "big push" approach to increasing women's financial control and access to local work opportunities, varying the intensity of treatment by randomly assigning some locations to have a higher saturation of treatment than others. We assess the impact of this approach in rural Madhya Pradesh, India through supporting women to access MGNREGS, a guaranteed work access program that provides low-wage work close to home. Support is provided through a government-driven push to ``link'' women's bank accounts to the workfare payment system, as well as through a standardized training utilizing a video and facilitated discussion, delivered in women's communities through either government representatives or NGO-sponsored trainers.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Bhattacharya, Urmi et al. 2025. "Empowering Women at Scale." AEA RCT Registry. July 01. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16310-1.1

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

There are two main interventions in the study: (i) training and (ii) linking.

Linking - We are coordinating with the state government to link women's bank accounts to their biometric identity (Aadhaar) cards, and to link their Aadhaar cards to the MGNREGS system, which allow them to avail of the MGNREGS work guarantee program. Given prior efforts to link
recent MGNREGS workers, this initiative will target "inactive" female workers who have not participated in MGNREGS in the last 2-3 years.

Training - We are collaborating with our NGO partner, PRADAN, to design and deliver trainings that build women’s capacity to request MGNREGS work and navigate direct deposit payments. PRADAN is a well-established Indian NGO dedicated to empowering rural communities through grassroots livelihood interventions. Within the training intervention, we test variations in (a) who delivers the training and (b) what share of women per village are trained. In each GP, we randomly select one village that receives training.

Intervention Start Date

2025-06-19

Intervention End Date

2025-10-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Labor supply

Gender-related attitudes and norms

Women's agency (e.g. related to physical mobility, financial decision making)

Male backlash behavior (e.g. intimate partner violence and controlling behavior)

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Household consumption patterns, as well as levels of debt, savings, and asset ownership

Physical and mental health, family planning, and measures of subjective well-being

General equilibrium outcomes including the price of labor (wages) for men and women, as well as prices of
other inputs to production, the price of consumption goods, and local economic activity

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

In the 90 blocks included in our study, 30 blocks are assigned to receive no intervention (pure control), 30 blocks are assigned to receive only the linking intervention, and 30 blocks are assigned to receive both the linking and training interventions.

Within the training and linking blocks, half of the GPs are randomly assigned to be NGO-led GPs, while the other half are assigned to be government-led GPs. Although both the NGO- and government-led GPs will receive trainings designed by PRADAN and will have trainers who are trained by PRADAN, the identity and experience level of the the last-mile trainers will vary. In the NGO-led GPs, the trainings are delivered by PRADAN appointed Community Resource Persons (CRPs), locally based employees, typically women, with experience supporting local self-help groups and providing training on a variety of topics. The government-led GPs will instead have trainings that are delivered by government-selected workers nominated by a local MGNREGS official, often "mahila mates." Mahila mates are women who are informally appointed to support community members in providing access to MGNREGS workfare, and typically they have less experience organising trainings. The goal of these two variations is to test whether mahila mates can deliver trainings at the last mile as effectively as more experienced PRADAN trainers, which would make this intervention more scalable.

Within the 30 training and linking blocks, half of the GPs are randomly assigned to be high-saturation GPs, while the other half of the GPs are low-saturation GPs. In low-saturation GPs, we target training approximately 25% of eligible women in the randomly selected village of the GP. In high-saturation GPs, we plan to train approximately 75% (recognizing that we may not quite achieve this target). Population numbers for saturation targets will be created using lists of women who are receiving payments through Ladli Behena Yojana (LBY), a recently rolled-out government program targeting low-income married women between the ages of 21 and 60, which is a good proxy for the target population of our own training intervention.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

randomisation done in office by a computer

Randomization Unit

Block - assignment to control, linking, or training+linking
GP - assignment to NGO- or government-led training cross-randomised with high- or low-saturation training
Individual - level of priority in training invitation

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes