Empowering Girls, Engaging Boys: Reducing Gender-Based Violence in Pakistan through School-level Interventions

Last registered on April 29, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Empowering Girls, Engaging Boys: Reducing Gender-Based Violence in Pakistan through School-level Interventions
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018455
Initial registration date
April 24, 2026

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
April 29, 2026, 3:41 PM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Danila Serra
Affiliation
Texas A&M University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Fareena Malhi
PI Affiliation
University of Bath
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PI Name
Humna Ahsan
PI Affiliation
Forman Christian College
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2025-10-13
End date
2028-04-30
Keywords
Behavior, Crime, Violence, & Conflict, Education, Gender
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
We evaluate scalable, school-based programs aimed at preventing gender-based violence (GBV) in public spaces and empowering adolescent girls in Punjab, Pakistan, where widespread sexual harassment severely limits girls’ mobility and school attendance. In partnership with the University of Health Sciences (UHS) and the School Education Department of Punjab, we implement a three-arm clustered randomized controlled trial in 91 girls-only and 49 boys-only public middle schools across Lahore, Kasur, and Sheikhupra. Girls in 30 randomly selected treatment schools receive self-defense training focused on situational awareness, assertive communication, and physical and verbal response strategies. A different randomly selected set of 30 girls-only schools receive no training but in nearby (within 2 km) boys-only schools, students participate in a program focused on gender sensitization, cognitive behavioral (CBT) coping strategies, and bystander intervention training. We contribute to the literature on early GBV prevention among adolescents in low-resource settings by integrating self-defense into girls’ empowerment programs and incorporating CBT into gender sensitization training for boys. The project has strong policy relevance; if successful, the girls’ and boys’ programs could be embedded into middle school curricula across Punjab with support from our government partners. Baseline data were collected in late 2025, and program implementation in boys’ and girls’ schools occurred in January and February 2026. We evaluate the impacts of the programs on experiences of GBV in public spaces (particularly in school vicinity), mobility, and education outcomes.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ahsan, Humna , Fareena Malhi and Danila Serra. 2026. " Empowering Girls, Engaging Boys: Reducing Gender-Based Violence in Pakistan through School-level Interventions." AEA RCT Registry. April 29. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18455-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The interventions target Grade 7 students in public, gender-segregated middle schools in Punjab. The study includes 91 girls’ schools, each with a nearby boys’ school located within 2 kilometers. One third of the girls’ schools are randomly selected to receive a self-defense training program for Grade 7 girls. Another third are assigned to a treatment arm in which the girls’ school does not receive the girls’ program, but the nearby boys’ school receives a CBT-inspired behavioral change intervention. The remaining third serves as the control group. Both the girls’ and the boys’ programs consist of weekly 120-minute sessions during school hours over six weeks. The girls’ program, delivered in collaboration with the UHS and the Pakistan Martial Arts Association, covers awareness of risky environments, confidence-building, assertive communication, and verbal and physical defense strategies. The boys’ program, designed and delivered in collaboration with UHS, includes GBV sensitization, cognitive behavioral coping techniques, and bystander training.
Intervention Start Date
2026-01-12
Intervention End Date
2026-02-28

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Girls’ primary outcomes of interest:
1) Experiences of physical and non-physical (e.g., verbal, digital) sexual harassment, particularly near the school or while commuting to school.
2) Measures of mobility, including details on trips outside the house in the 7 days prior to the survey (excluding going to school);
3) Education outcomes.

Boys’ primary outcomes of interest:
1) Reports of witnessed physical and non-physical sexual harassment committed by close friends, particularly near the school or while commuting to school.
2) Attitudes and perceived social norms related to harassment and reporting.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Reports of experienced (for girls) and witnessed (for boys) harassment in public spaces are measured through direct elicitation for half of the respondents, and through the hard garbling survey technique for the other half (via random assignment). Additional questions measure perceptions of safety in school vicinity, and indirect experiences (i.e. having heard or seen a woman being harassed in a public space.)

Education outcomes: completion of grade 7, completion of grade 8, enrollment in grade 9, school attendance and performance at the end of grades 7 and 8 (if made available to us by the schools).

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
For girls: (i) Confidence, self-efficacy, and aspirations regarding education and mobility; (ii) attitudes and perceived social norms related to harassment and reporting; iii) coping skills related to harassment; iv) emotional well-being.

For boys: (i) measures of impulsiveness, responsiveness to social pressure, and CBT-like thinking; (ii) willingness to intervene when witnessing harassment; iii) emotional well-being; iv) education outcomes.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The interventions target Grade 7 students in public, gender-segregated middle schools in Punjab. The study includes 120 girls’ schools, each with a nearby boys’ school located within 2 kilometers. One third of the girls’ schools are randomly selected to receive a self-defense training program for Grade 7 girls. Another third are assigned to a treatment arm in which the girls’ school does not receive the girls’ program, but the nearby boys’ school receives a behavioral change intervention. The remaining third serves as the control group. Both the girls’ and the boys’ programs consist of weekly 120-minute sessions during school hours over six weeks. The girls’ program, delivered in collaboration with the University of Health Sciences (UHS) and the Pakistan Martial Arts Association, covers awareness of risky environments, confidence-building, assertive communication, and verbal and physical defense strategies. The boys’ program, designed and delivered in collaboration with UHS, includes GBV sensitization, cognitive behavioral techniques, and bystander training. In each school where either the girls’ program or the boys’ program was implemented, 60 randomly selected grade 7 students participated in the program.

Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Randomization is conducted at the school level across geographically defined 2 km clusters. We first identified clusters consisting of at least one girls’ school and one boys’ school located within 2 kilometers of each other, yielding a total of 47 clusters in the study area. Clusters are then randomized into three groups (Girl-Training, Boy-Training and Control), stratified by district (Lahore, Kasur, and Sheikhupura) and by large cluster size, defined as the number of girls’ schools in each cluster being greater than 3.

This design ensures that treated girls’ (boys’) schools are not within walking distance of boys’ (girls’) treated schools, keeping the girls’ and boys’ treatment arms geographically separated. The randomization strategy also ensures that control girls’ and boys’ schools are spatially isolated from all treated schools.

Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
47 geographical clusters including a total of 91 girls’ schools and 75 boys’ schools.
Sample size: planned number of observations
- 20 girls surveyed in each of the 91 girls’ schools, for a total of 1820 girls enrolled in grade 7 at the time of the intervention. In treatment schools, girls are randomly chosen from the 60 who participated in the school program; - 25 boys surveyed in boys’ schools assigned to Control (27 schools) or to the Boy-Training intervention (22 schools), for a total of 1225 boys enrolled in grade 7 at the time of the intervention. In treatment schools, the surveyed boys are randomly chosen from the 60 who participated in the school program. Conditional on having access to administrative education data at the school level, the number of observations (for education outcomes) will increase to 60 students per school (and ideally the full student cohort).
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

1. Girl-Training treatment: 30 girls’ schools and 26 nearby (within 2Km) boys’ schools.
2. Boy-Training treatment: 22 boys’ schools and 32 nearby (within 2Km) girls’ schools.
3. Control: 29 girls’ schools and 27 nearby (within 2 Km) boys’ schools.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Texas A&M University Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2025-08-28
IRB Approval Number
STUDY2025-0818
IRB Name
University of Health Sciences Instructional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2025-05-26
IRB Approval Number
UHS/DPS-25/737
Analysis Plan