Social Norms and Social Media: Can WhatsApp Groups Increase Female Labor Force Participation in Rural Egypt?

Last registered on October 07, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Social Norms and Social Media: Can WhatsApp Groups Increase Female Labor Force Participation in Rural Egypt?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0019855
Initial registration date
October 01, 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
October 07, 2026, 10:37 AM 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
Marieke Kleemans
Affiliation
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Sharanya Bhattacharjee
PI Affiliation
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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PI Name
Abdelrahman Nagy
PI Affiliation
International Initiative for Impact Evaluation
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2027-08-01
End date
2028-12-31
Keywords
Gender, Labor
Additional Keywords
social media, scalable digital delivery, information frictions, job search, social networks, pluralistic ignorance, social norms, employment, female labor force participation
JEL code(s)
J16, J22, O12, D83, D91, C93
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Female labor force participation in Egypt remains persistently low despite rising female educational attainment. This project will evaluate whether social media can serve as a scalable, low-cost channel to increase female labor force participation by reducing information frictions about job opportunities and correcting misperceived social norms about women working. Our preliminary survey reveals a large gap between women's own views and their perception of other women's views: while most respondents support women's right to work, they believe that other women in their community hold more conservative views, a pattern known as ``pluralistic ignorance.'' We will implement a randomized controlled trial with 3,000 women organized into 600 WhatsApp groups of socially connected women, formed by local facilitators and randomly assigned to one of three arms: (i) Control: group formation only; (ii) Treatment 1: group formation plus weekly job vacancies; or (iii) Treatment 2: group formation plus weekly job vacancies and belief-correction messages conveying accurate information about community support for women's work. The design uses WhatsApp's combination of vertical information delivery and horizontal peer interaction to estimate the effects of vacancy information and belief correction on beliefs, job applications, and job take-up. We will also estimate effects on intra-household decision-making and psychosocial well-being, and use large language models to analyze the WhatsApp conversations to study mechanisms.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Bhattacharjee, Sharanya, Marieke Kleemans and Abdelrahman Nagy. 2026. "Social Norms and Social Media: Can WhatsApp Groups Increase Female Labor Force Participation in Rural Egypt?." AEA RCT Registry. October 07. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19855-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Local female facilitators form WhatsApp groups of socially connected women in rural villages of Sohag Governorate, Egypt. Each group is randomly assigned to one of three arms: (i) Control, group formation only, with no information shared; (ii) Treatment 1, group formation plus weekly posts of real local job vacancies; and (iii) Treatment 2, group formation plus weekly job vacancies and belief-correction messages conveying accurate information about community support for women's work. The study tests whether vacancy information and belief correction, shared by a known female facilitator, affect women's beliefs, job applications and job take-up.
Intervention Start Date
2027-08-01
Intervention End Date
2028-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Job applications and job take-up: whether the woman applied for a job, whether she took up a job, and days worked. First- and second-order beliefs about women's work: her own stated support for female employment, her estimate of the share of women in her community who support female employment, the gap between the two, and an index of favorable beliefs.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The index of favorable beliefs aggregates the woman's responses to four statements on support for female employment using inverse-covariance weights. Please refer to the attached pre-analysis plan for details.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Intra-household decision-making: household expenditure, children's schooling, healthcare decisions, the woman's own mobility, and a decision index. Physical and mental well-being: mental health, life satisfaction, self-rated physical health, days ill in the past 30 days, and a well-being index.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Each decision-making outcome is a standardized index of survey responses on the woman's role in that domain. The decision index and the well-being index are inverse-covariance-weighted averages of their components. Please refer to the attached pre-analysis plan for details.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We will implement a randomized controlled trial with approximately 3,000 women aged 18 to 55 in rural villages of Sohag Governorate, Egypt. Local female facilitators form WhatsApp groups of socially connected women, and the group is the unit of randomization. The 600 groups are randomly assigned in equal numbers to three arms: Control, group formation only; Treatment 1, group formation plus weekly job vacancies; and Treatment 2, group formation plus weekly job vacancies and belief-correction messages. A baseline survey covers all sampled women before the intervention and an endline survey follows it. Treatment effects are estimated by comparing outcomes across the three arms, with standard errors clustered at the group level.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization of WhatsApp groups is done in office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
The WhatsApp group, consisting of approximately five socially connected women. There is a single level of randomization.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
600 WhatsApp groups
Sample size: planned number of observations
3,000 women
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
200 WhatsApp groups (approximately 1,000 women) in Control, 200 groups (approximately 1,000 women) in Treatment 1, and 200 groups (approximately 1,000 women) in Treatment 2.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
With 200 groups per arm and approximately five women per group, the study has 80 percent power to detect standardized effects of approximately 0.13 to 0.17 standard deviations for intra-cluster correlations between 0.01 and 0.20, and approximately 0.15 standard deviations at moderate values. Please refer to the attached pre-analysis plan for details.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Institutional Review Board, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
IRB Approval Date
2026-06-30
IRB Approval Number
IRB26-0813
Analysis Plan

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