Measurement and Evaluation

Women’s economic empowerment is critical for reducing poverty and achieving broader health and development objectives. However, there is limited evidence on how programs can economically empower women and which measures can be used to know whether programs are effective.  

ICRW, with funding from the U.K. Department for International Development, created a conceptual framework for measuring women’s economic empowerment that takes into account their capacity to earn income as well as their ability to make decisions and control resources.

The framework reflects the latest thinking on economic empowerment, ICRW’s experience and discussions ICRW had with staff and participants during site visits to economic development programs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos and Nepal. The framework also incorporates feedback from a workshop that ICRW convened with donors, multilateral institutions and implementing partners to discuss the applicability of the framework for measuring women’s economic empowerment.

Over the next decade, 142 million girls are expected to marry before they turn 18. While this practice has diminished in many places, the pace of change has been slow in South Asia, particularly in India, where 40 percent of the world’s child marriages occur.

To help reduce child marriage, the government of India has launched several large-scale conditional cash transfer (CCT) initiatives to incentivize families to delay their daughters’ marriages. CCTs are arrangements in which governments provide individuals cash to encourage social change. CCTs represent a potentially cost-effective, high-impact strategy to delay marriage, however they have not yet been rigorously evaluated.

Through the Impact on Marriage: Program Assessment of Conditional Cash Transfers (IMPACCT) project, ICRW will evaluate the Apni Beti Apna Dhan (ABAD) program, one of the first CCT interventions in India to include delayed marriage as a specific goal. Initiated in 1994, the local government of Haryana dedicated bonds to newly-born girls that can be cashed out after the girls turn 18 and only if they are unmarried. The first beneficiaries will reach 18 in 2012, presenting the first opportunity to assess the program’s success in delaying marriage.

For its evaluation, ICRW will analyze government records and data on the ABAD effort. Experts also will survey girls and parents who participated in the program and those who did not, to compare their attitudes and behaviors related to child marriage. Finally, ICRW will interview key government officials to examine how well ABAD was implemented and identify how it might be improved for future CCT programs.

Alcohol use is associated with HIV risk behavior, according to a growing body of research. Programs that address the link between alcohol and HIV are urgently needed, but extremely rare.

ICRW and its partners will design and monitor a community-based intervention the informal settlement of Kabila, Namibia, located on the outskirts of the capital city, Windhoek. Many residents have migrated from rural areas in search of a viable income, and brewing and selling alcohol is one of the few profitable businesses.  

The project goal is to design, implement and assess the feasibility of an intervention to reduce the prevalence of heavy drinking and decrease alcohol-related sexual risk behavior among bar patrons in the community. ICRW will conduct formative research to better understand the impact of alcohol and related risky behavior on women and men. Research findings will inform the design of a demonstration program that applies multiple strategies to decrease alcohol-related HIV risk behavior. The results of this study will be used to inform future programming targeted at addressing links between alcohol and HIV risk.

This project is coordinated by AIDSTAR-One. As an AIDSTAR-One partner organization, ICRW provides technical oversight for this project.

Savings can be a powerful tool for poor women to escape poverty. But low-income women often are unaware of formal savings methods and their advantages. And women feel the need to secretly manage their finances because of gender power imbalances over the control of household income.

Can a television drama encourage low-income women to establish sound savings habits with formal financial institutions? ICRW is working with a consortium of partners in the Dominican Republic, including Women’s World Banking and Puntos de Encuentro, to launch and evaluate an innovative mass media campaign to improve perceptions about formal saving mechanisms and to encourage open dialogue between women and men about their financial habits. The project’s centerpiece is a 20-episode telenovela that will focus on the financial behaviors of couples and how they work toward more cooperative financial management. The television program will be complemented by an advertising campaign for specific savings products geared toward low-income women.

ICRW will conduct a rigorous evaluation of the program, measuring women’s awareness and opinions of formal saving methods and whether men and women discuss household finances before, during and after the campaign in order to determine what changes the program has caused.

Gender attitudes and norms, such as those around the roles and responsibilities of women and men, are learned at a young age. Through the Gender Equity Movement in Schools (GEMS) program, ICRW has been exploring the potential for school-based curriculums to influence the formation of more gender-equitable norms among adolescents.

In partnership with the Committee of Resource Organizations for Literacy (CORO) and the Tata Institute for Social Sciences (TISS), ICRW has developed and implemented a curriculum to engage young girls and boys, age 12-14 years, to discuss and critically reflect on the issues related to inequitable gender norms and violence. GEMS project was implemented in public schools in Goa, Kota and Mumbai using different approaches. In Goa and Kota, it was layered with ongoing school curriculum, while in Mumbai, it was implemented as independent pilot project in 45 schools. Using extracurricular activities, role-playing and games, GEMS began in the sixth grade and works for two years with boys and girls ages 12-14 in public schools.

The pilot phase in Mumbai demonstrated the potential of GEMS to engage young adolescents on issues of gender and violence and bring attitudinal change to support equitable norms. The outcome variables that demonstrate the greatest change are clustered around appropriate roles for women and men and girls and boys. Other key attitudinal and behavioral changes are increased support for a higher age at marriage for girls, greater male involvement in household work, increased opposition to gender discrimination, and improved reactions to violence.

Following the success of the pilot phase in Mumbai, the Maharashtra state government has integrated key elements of GEMS in the school gender program for all of its nearly 25,000 public schools.  ICRW, CORO and TISS are supporting the state in designing curriculum and training master trainers. In addition, we are supporting implementation and documentation of the scale-up phase in Mumbai.

GEMS has also found relevance in Vietnam. PyD is implementing GEMS in 20 schools in DaNang Province in collaboration with the government of Vietnam and technical support from ICRW.

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Understanding the gender norms and notions of masculinity that contribute to violent behaviors– and engaging young men to critically reflect on and address these social constructs – can help foster more gender-equitable attitudes and reduce violence.

Led by CARE Northwest Balkans, ICRW is part of a coalition of local and international nongovernmental organizations and youth groups working in the Western Balkans on the Young Men’s Initiative (YMI). The project aims to build more gender-equitable, healthy, and non-violent lifestyles among youth across this post-conflict region. YMI uses social media campaigns and a school-based curriculum (adapted from Promundo's "Program H" model) to help young men between the ages of 13 and 19 deconstruct masculinity and reflect on how unhealthy gender norms lead to the inequitable treatment of women and girls.

ICRW’s engagement with YMI has spanned over 6 years, starting with participatory research to understand prevailing attitudes about the “ideal” man and what it means to be a man in project communities. Findings were applied to inform the design of a pilot intervention (Phase 1), which ICRW evaluated from 2009 to 2010 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Since 2010, ICRW has been leading an evaluation of Phase 2 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovo. Preliminary results suggest an increased uptake of gender-equitable attitudes related to violence, homophobia, family dynamics, and sexual and reproductive health after participating in the project.

Related Resources

• Bosnia and Herzegovina Baseline Report
• Serbia Baseline Report

Women play a crucial role in the apparel industry, comprising a majority of the world’s garment workers. ICRW and Gap, Inc. are collaborating to help female garment workers fulfill their potential through education. Gap, Inc.’s Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement (P.A.C.E.) is an innovative, factory-based education program that provides training for life skills, such as problem-solving and financial literacy, as well as workplace skills to help women advance beyond entry-level positions. ICRW partnered with Gap, Inc. on the initial development and implementation of the program, which was piloted in India, one of Gap, Inc.’s largest sourcing markets.

ICRW evaluates the program’s impact on participants in all countries where the program is being implemented. Initial results are promising. Women demonstrate more willingness to take on responsibilities and assume leadership roles; communicate better and more effectively at work and in their homes; show improved ability to solve workplace problems; and are better able to support their peers. In addition to gaining more respect from their family members, women also value themselves more.

Based on the success of the initial pilot programs, Gap, Inc. has expanded P.A.C.E. to additional factories in India and Cambodia. Development and implementation strategies for additional countries are currently underway.

Women and girls are frequently subject to violence and abuse – from physical and verbal harassment to assault and rape – on city streets, public transportation or in their own neighborhoods. Such daily occurrences limit the rights and freedoms of women as equal citizens to enjoy their neighborhoods and cities.

ICRW worked with UNIFEM to develop ways to make public spaces safer for women and girls. The program, Safe Cities Free of Violence Against Women and Girls, was the first-ever global comparative effort to develop a model that was rigorously evaluated for its processes and impact across different settings. The goal of the program was to develop and test a global model which can be replicated and tailored to the specificities of local contexts.

ICRW collaborated with local partners on project design and the impact evaluation strategy. The project aimed to improve women’s safety by empowering women within the community, encouraging community advocacy for safer spaces, partnering with local governments, working with men and boys, and raising public awareness through the media.