Can Development Aid Empower Women? Evidence from a Field Experiment in the Congo

Can development aid empower women? We randomly assigned 1,250 Congolese communities to a development program that distributed development funds and included women in project selection and implementation, with the goal of empowering women. In 2010 and 2011, we revisited 816 treatment and control comm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of politics Vol. 80; no. 3; pp. 1039 - 1044
Main Author van der Windt, Peter
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chicago University of Chicago on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association 01.07.2018
University of Chicago Press
Subjects
Attitudes
Behavior change
Community
Community development
Development aid
Development programs
Empowerment
Households
Implementation
Money
SHORT ARTICLE
Welfare
Women
aid
Congo
women’s empowerment
experiments
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Summary:Can development aid empower women? We randomly assigned 1,250 Congolese communities to a development program that distributed development funds and included women in project selection and implementation, with the goal of empowering women. In 2010 and 2011, we revisited 816 treatment and control communities to collect survey data. Furthermore, in 413 communities we implemented a $1,000 unconditional cash transfer program to assess behavioral change. We find only weak evidence that the program influenced the role of women in the community and policy outcomes and no evidence that the program had an impact on the role of women within the household or attitudes toward them.
ISSN:0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI:10.1086/697955