Increasing Women’s Voice and Agency Using Role Models and Skills Training: Experimental Evidence from the MNREGA Program in Odisha, India

Kosec, Katrinal; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Kyle, Jordan; Narayanan, Sudha; and Karachiwalla, Naureen. 2023. Increasing Women’s Voice and Agency Using Role Models and Skills Training: Experimental Evidence from the MNREGA Program in Odisha, India. AEA RCT Registry.

Can exposing women to role models improve their participation in community decision-making and broadly increase their perceived voice and agency beyond the household? And can additionally providing skills training on identifying policy priorities, setting goals, and speaking in public bolster any effects? We consider these research questions in the context of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) program in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. The MGNREGA entitles each rural Indian household to a minimum of 100 days of manual unskilled work at stipulated minimum wages. A key secondary goal of this program is creating durable assets to promote sustainable rural livelihoods. On paper, decisions around which assets will be constructed and where are to be made by community members in a participatory process. Across 94 communities in 4 districts, we will gather 1400 groups of women (approximately 15 per community). Each group will involve a target woman – selected at random from among all women in the community whose households hold an MGNREGA job card (a necessary document to participate in the program and select assets) – as well as 3-5 friends or neighbors (not family members) she invites to join her. Interventions with these groups will be conducted by a team of trained facilitators, one per group.

We have three study arms. All women will receive a brief information leaflet containing details on the formal processes for demanding assets under the MGNREGA, including information on eligibility and the types of assets that are feasible, and how women can participate in meetings at the revenue village and village levels (palli sabhas and gram sabhas, respectively). The facilitator will orally discuss all of the details of the leaflet with each group. In the placebo group only, the women gathered will watch an approximately 15-minute video unrelated to our study. Treatment group 1 (T1) will receive an aspirations treatment; gathered women will watch and discuss a 15-20-minute inspirational video about how women in Odisha have successfully participated in MGNREGA asset selection. Treatment group 2 (T2) will receive the aspirations treatment as for T1 and an additional skills training; specifically, they will receive a new training curriculum called “Planning for Voice” focused on conferring the skills needed to demand desired MGNREGA assets. This skills training takes approximately 1.5 hours to administer and emphasizes how to set specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and timebound goals in relation to participating in the MGNREGA asset selection process, while offering opportunities for role play and public speaking practice around asset demands. Importantly, the recruitment script will be the same for all study groups and facilitators carefully trained on not sharing any information about the training they are to receive with women before consenting them.

We will analyze the impacts of each of T1 and T2 relative to the placebo. Treatments received in the placebo allow us to ensure it is not the act of gathering, or information about how to participate in asset selection, that drives the effects of T1 and T2, but rather the inspirational video, or the combination of the inspirational video plus public speaking skills training components. While information and gathering on their own may confer some benefits, the purpose of this study is to test the independent effects of raising aspirations, and or raising aspirations in addition to conferring skills, in demanding assets. We posit that T1 will deliver improvements for some women relative to placebo, and T2 will deliver significantly more improvements than does T1.