Women's ability to fight back, hopes & aspirations: Evidence from a Field Experiment in India

Last registered on July 12, 2022

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Women's ability to fight back, hopes & aspirations: Evidence from a Field Experiment in India
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0007220
Initial registration date
March 07, 2021

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
March 08, 2021, 10:26 AM EST

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

Last updated
July 12, 2022, 3:40 PM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Department of Economic Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
PI Affiliation
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2019-10-01
End date
2024-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
There occurs one rape every 14 minutes and one incident of cruelty by husband or his relatives every 5 minutes (NCRB, 2016). Alongside, the female labour force participation rate across India has declined from 30.28% in 1990 to 20.52% in 2019 (World Bank, 2020). Excessive dependence on family (for both physical and economic safety) and lack of knowledge about various laws that safeguard women could be a major reason for the reduction in the female labour force participation rate. In the current study, we plan to conduct awareness workshops with adolescent girls, wherein the various laws which protect women’s rights and self-defense techniques shall be discussed. We plan to see whether these workshops improve women’s knowledge about these laws, instill self-confidence among women and positively affect their future hopes and aspirations, in the form of motivating them to go for higher education and participate in the labour force, etc. We also plan to see whether these workshops have significant spillover effects on siblings and friends of the participants, particularly focusing on heterogeneous effects by age and gender of siblings and caste of friends. We also plan to conduct a follow-up survey six months after the endline survey to understand whether the effects persist over time.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Lalji, Chitwan, Debayan Pakrashi and Sarani Saha. 2022. "Women's ability to fight back, hopes & aspirations: Evidence from a Field Experiment in India." AEA RCT Registry. July 12. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.7220-1.1
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The main objective of this study is to examine whether knowledge dissemination and self-defense workshops can improve awareness among adolescent girls, positively boost self-confidence and eventually affect their future hopes and aspirations in the form of taking better decisions regarding higher education, employment, etc. We also plan to see whether these workshops have spillover effects on siblings and friends, and whether there exists heterogeneous effects across age and gender of siblings and caste of friends. We also plan to see whether these effects persist over time.
Intervention Start Date
2020-07-01
Intervention End Date
2020-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Respondents' knowledge about the various laws that protect women and their rights, perception of safety and security, confidence to fight back, future hopes and aspirations (overall) and in the form of motivation to complete schooling, graduate and work in the future, etc.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Overall wellbeing of the student captured in terms of life satisfaction and mental health, spillover effects on siblings (residing in the same household) and their best (female) friends (outside the house).
Academic scores of students in grades 10 and 12 and probability of selecting STEM and professional courses for students post grade 10.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The objective is to examine whether an awareness drive and a self-defense training has any effect on awareness, confidence to fight back, and on future hopes and aspirations captured in the form of motivation to graduate and work, etc. To this end, we compare the endline outcomes of the adolescent girls from the treatment group, who receive the training and the awareness campaigns with those from the control group, which receives nothing. Spillover effects on siblings and friends, specifically whether there exists heterogeneous effects due to age and gender of siblings and caste of friends shall also be investigated. A follow-up shall also be conducted 6 months after the endline to understand whether the treatment effects persist over time.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization shall be done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Randomization shall be done at the region level.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Students enrolled in 60 different schools and residing in 20 regions in Patna, Bihar will be assigned to the 2 treatments and the control group.
Sample size: planned number of observations
690 students (direct beneficiaries), 504 students (best friends of the participants) and 197 siblings of the students selected for the project. The friends and siblings were only part of the spillover survey. A follow-up survey was administered for 348 students.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
202 students from control group, 243 students in the Only Awareness group (Treatment I) and 245 students from Awareness & Training (Treatment 2).
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC), Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
IRB Approval Date
2019-09-26
IRB Approval Number
IITK/IEC/2019-2020/I/11