Reshaping Adolescents' Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India
American Economic Review
vol. 112,
no. 3, March 2022
(pp. 899-927)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
This paper evaluates an intervention in India that engaged adolescent girls and boys in classroom discussions about gender equality for two years, aiming to reduce their support for societal norms that restrict women's and girls' opportunities. Using a randomized controlled trial, we find that the program made attitudes more supportive of gender equality by 0.18 standard deviations, or, equivalently, converted 16 percent of regressive attitudes. When we resurveyed study participants two years after the intervention had ended, the effects had persisted. The program also led to more gender-equal self-reported behavior, and we find weak evidence that it affected two revealed-preference measures.Citation
Dhar, Diva, Tarun Jain, and Seema Jayachandran. 2022. "Reshaping Adolescents' Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India." American Economic Review, 112 (3): 899-927. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20201112Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
- D91 Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
- I21 Analysis of Education
- J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development