Reshaping Adolescents' Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India
Diva Dhar, Tarun Jain, Seema Jayachandran
American Economic Review · 2022 · Volume 112 · Issue 3
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.
Keywords
Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement, Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making, Analysis of Education, Fertility, Family Planning, Child Care, Children, Youth, Economics of Gender, Non-labor Discrimination, Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
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