Empowering Adolescent Girls: Does it take a Village?

Alison Andrew, Sonya Krutikova, Gabriela Smarrelli and Hemlata Verma

No 21508, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: The social environment is key to sustaining gender inequalities but many policies and programs target only women and do not involve the wider community. Can such approaches work or, by pushing women to break accepted norms, do they expose women to stress and backlash? What are the impacts of engaging the wider community? We use a 3-armed RCT covering 5000 adolescent girls across 125 communities in rural Rajasthan to explore these questions. We assess the impacts of weekly Girl Groups that worked only with adolescent girls and the impacts of additionally engaging the wider community. Both models led to a reduction in school dropout and early marriage. However, targeting adolescent girls without involving the broader community led to an increase in girls adopting a ruminative thinking style and no improvements in depression and anxiety. By contrast, when the wider community was engaged, girls' symptoms of depression and anxiety fell by 0.16 SD and 0.17 SD respectively and there were no negative impacts on rumination. We show evidence that such improvements in mental health may have resulted from the community engagement changing prevailing attitudes and internalized norms.

Keywords: Development; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
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