doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/40329

Person:
Rouanet, Léa

Fields of Specialization

Development Economics, Gender, Impact Evaluations

External Links

Lea Rouanet, Google

Last updated: May 21, 2025

Biography

I am a Senior Economist working at the World Bank, where I am the Deputy Head of the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL). I support African women and girls to achieve equality by learning what does and does not work to close gender gaps in earnings, productivity, assets, and agency, and using these insights to shape policy. I currently lead several impact evaluations aiming to identify and address gender-based constraints to economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa. I also lead the conceptualization and execution of the GIL research uptake strategy within the World Bank and with selected external partners; and supervise all research uptake analysts and research analysts within the team. Before joining the World Bank, I was a PhD candidate and Research Fellow at the Paris School of Economics, where my research focused on nutrition, child mortality, fertility and gender preferences in Africa. I hold a PhD from the Paris School of Economics.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 17

Assessing Workplace Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills in Africa: The ESTEEM Framework
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-21) Marsh, Vic; Delavallade, Clara; Das, Smita; Rouanet, Léa; Koroknay-Palicz, Tricia; McDaniel, Dawn
Social, emotional, and behavioral skills are critical for success across life domains, yet research is constrained by a lack of internationally validated measures for adult populations. Existing tools often assess isolated skills and are predominantly validated in Western, school- aged samples. To address these limitations, this study developed and validated the Effective Socio-emotional skills To gain Economic EMpowerment framework, comprising 14 distinct social, emotional, and behavioral skills with prior demonstrated relevance to economic outcomes. The framework’s self-report scales were tested among adults in six Sub-Saharan African countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania), spanning diverse cultural and linguistic contexts (English, French, Hausa, Swahili, and Yoruba). The results confirm the psychometric validity of the scales, supporting their utility in both research and practice. The framework categorizes skills as intrapersonal or interpersonal, awareness or management, and agentic or communal, providing a robust tool to unpack which skills matter for employment and earnings and how this differs by gender. By enabling exploration of social, emotional, and behavioral skills in underrepresented and cross-cultural contexts, use of the Effective Socio-emotional skills To gain Economic EMpowerment self-report scales advances theoretical and practical understanding of social, emotional, and behavioral skills in adult populations.
Does Free Sound Too Cheap? The Adverse Effect of a Randomized Text Message Campaign on Program Take-up
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-12) Annan, Jeannie; Koussoubé, Estelle; Tassy, Joséphine; Rouanet, Léa; Delavallade, Clara; Evans, David K.
This study conducted a randomized experiment to improve participation in a youth employment program in Côte d'Ivoire by testing text message outreach methods. Sending text messages highlighting that the program was free only to eligible youth had no impact, but messages sent to both youth and trusted contacts led to reduced enrollment. This negative effect was smaller for women, and 0 when their contact was also female. Qualitative findings suggest that distrust among unfamiliar contacts contributed to this decline. The study highlights the importance of tailoring communication strategies in job training programs to increase effectiveness, considering recipients’ relationships and trust.
Exploring the Drivers of Youth Pursuing Vocational Training in High-Paying Sectors in Côte d’Ivoire
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-25) Delavallade, Clara; Zenaki, Manil; Rouanet, Léa; Koussoubé, Estelle
Education and skills are two key determinants of earning potential, with sector specialization significantly influencing earnings. This study examines the drivers behind training choices in two high-paying sectors: information and communications technology (ICT) and energy. Drawing on data from 2,528 individuals seeking vocational training in Côte d’Ivoire, we find that a majority (72% of men and 51% of women) aspire to train in ICT or energy. For both genders, higher levels of education and larger professional networks are positively correlated with selecting training in these high-paying sectors. For women, previous training in similar fields strongly predicts their training choices, highlighting path dependency. Additionally, women benefit more from male role models, which significantly increase their likelihood of choosing a training in ICT or energy. Women with greater agency are also more likely to opt for training in these sectors. Conversely, women holding more traditional views on specific household responsibilities are less likely to choose high-paying sector training.
Empowering Adolescent Girls through Safe Spaces and Accompanying Measures in Côte d’Ivoire
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-13) Boulhane, Othmane; Boxho, Claire; Kanga, Désiré; Koussoube, Estelle; Rouanet, Léa
This study uses a cluster-randomized controlled trial to investigate the effects of a large-scale women and girls empowerment program on sexual and reproductive health and empowerment outcomes in Côte d’Ivoire. The study assesses and compares the impact of diverse strategies aimed at equipping girls with life skills and sexual and reproductive health knowledge, provided through well-established safe spaces, in isolation or in combination with livelihood support interventions, or with initiatives designed to engage boys and men and community and religious leaders. The findings show that one year after the end of the interventions, safe spaces alone have a moderate impact on girls’ empowerment, while safe spaces combined with husbands’ and future husbands’ clubs are the most impactful. Combining safe spaces with livelihood support interventions leads to improvements in adolescent girls’ employment outcomes, as expected. Finally, the findings show that engaging leaders in the context of safe spaces interventions yields mixed results on girls’ empowerment.
Which Socio-Emotional Skills Matter Most for Women’s Earnings? New Insights from Sub-Saharan Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03-30) Ajayi, Kehinde; Das, Smita; Delavallade, Clara; Ketema, Tigist Assefa; Rouanet, Léa
Evidence on gender-specific returns to socio-emotional skills in developing economies is lacking. To inform the selection of socio-emotional skills in policy design, a new study mobilizing data from 17 African countries with 41,873 respondents examines gender differences in ten self-reported socio-emotional skills and their relationship with education and earnings. Evidence from the existing literature shows that socio-emotional skills positively influence labor market outcomes. Findings from our sample suggest that women in Sub-Saharan Africa could benefit from training programs designed to improve their socio-emotional skills, as women earn on average 54 percent less than men and report lower levels of socio-emotional skills. Educational attainment, which likely contributes to the increase of socioemotional skills for both men and women, might not be enough to eliminate gender differences in socio-emotional skills, since even among the most educated individuals, women still have lower levels of socio-emotional skills than men. Research on the relationship between socio-emotional skills and labor market outcomes should be deepened to improve the design of future programs teaching socio-emotional skills in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that public interventions seeking to equip women with interpersonal skills (e.g., teamwork, expressiveness, and interpersonal relatedness) may provide an effective pathway to reduce gender disparities in the labor market.
Gender Differences in Socio-Emotional Skills and Economic Outcomes: New Evidence from 17 African Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-10) Ajayi, Kehinde; Das, Smita; Delavallade, Clara; Ketema, Tigist; Rouanet, Léa
Using data from 41,873 individuals across 17 African countries and 13 studies, this paper maps data from various self-reported scales to 10 socio-emotional skills and examine gender differences in these skills and their relationship with education and earnings. Apart from self-control, the findings show a significant male advantage in self-reported skills—men have an aggregate socio-emotional skill level 0.151 standard deviations higher than women, equivalent to the socio-emotional skill gained over 5.6 years of education. This is robust to controlling for positive self-concept. Closing the gender gap in education would close 17percent of this gap. While overall socio-emotional skill and education are positively correlated for both men and women, women do not have a positive correlation with education for some individual socio-emotional skills. The male advantage in socio-emotional skills increases at higher education levels. Socio-emotional skills are associated with higher earnings, especially for women. However, the specific skills associated with higher earnings differ by gender. Interpersonal skills are more strongly correlated with earnings for women than for men, and measures of these skills are often underrepresented, which indicates a key direction for future research. The paper further examines differences in the relationship between socio-emotional skills and earnings by levels of education and occupation. It discusses the implications of these results for interventions seeking to hone women’s socio-emotional skills for labor market success and to address the gender norms that may perpetuate gaps in socio-emotional skills.
The Gendered Impacts of COVID-19 on Adolescents’ School Attendance in Sub-Saharan Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-06-28) Kis, Anna B.; Boxho, Claire; Gaddis, Isis; Koussoube, Estelle; Rouanet, Léa; Rouanet, Léa
As the COVID-19 pandemic led to a historic and widespread shutdown of schools across the world, including in Sub-Saharan Africa, there were general concerns that girls would be disproportionately affected. This study analyzes the effects of the pandemic on the school attendance of adolescent girls and boys in six African countries. The study uses individual-level data on children’s school attendance collected as part of high-frequency phone surveys. Contrary to expectations, the study reveals that there is no evidence to suggest that gender gaps widened during the pandemic. If anything, gender gaps appear to have narrowed in some countries. Further in-depth analysis shows that while being a descendent of the household head, having parents with at least primary education, and above-median household wealth were associated with a higher probability of school attendance among adolescents before the pandemic, these factors lost their salience in explaining school attendance in the aftermath of the pandemic. These results suggest that some traditionally protective forces were eroded during the COVID-19 crisis.
Steered Away from the Fields: Short-Term Impacts of Oxen on Agricultural Production and Intra-household Labor Supply
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-07-13) Brudevold-Newman, Andrew; Donald, Altheia; Rouanet, Léa
Mechanization has the potential to boost agricultural production and reduce poverty in rural economies, but its impacts remain poorly understood. This paper randomizes the subsidized provision of a pair of traction oxen among 2,546 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire through a matching grant. The analysis finds positive impacts on households’ agricultural production during the agricultural season overlapping with oxen delivery, and additional increases in total land holdings and use of complementary inputs in the subsequent season. The intervention affected household members in different ways, with wives and daughters substantially reducing their work on the farm—especially in districts with more stringent gender norms around handling oxen. In these districts, introducing traction oxen resulted in women shifting to off-farm work. The intervention also improved girls’ health and reduced school dropout among boys. The results provide novel evidence on the human development effects of mechanization, while highlighting how social prescriptions mediate the impacts of technology within the household.
Two Heads are Better Than One: Agricultural Production and Investment in Côte d’Ivoire
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-05) Donald, Aletheia; Goldstein, Markus; Rouanet, Léa
Increasing agricultural productivity and investment is critical to reducing poverty, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture remains the dominant income-generating activity. One potential way to promote investment and improve the efficiency of household farm production is to empower women as co-managers and facilitate the coordination of production decisions within the family. The authors test this approach in Côte d’Ivoire through a couples training delivered to rubber producers, and find that including women in economic planning improved the efficiency of household farm production and promoted higher levels of investment.
Addressing Gender-Based Occupational Segregation: Experimental Evidence from the Republic of Congo
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-01) Gassier, Marine; Pierotti, Rachael Susan; Rouanet, Lea Marie; Traore, Lacina; Rouanet, Léa
Gender-based occupational segregation - the fact that men and women are typically concentrated in different occupations and economic sectors - contributes to gender gaps in earnings. In an experiment in the Republic of Congo, the authors examine whether addressing informational constraints around returns from male dominated sectors can encourage young women to apply for training in more profitable male-dominated sectors. There is high potential for interventions that pair information on returns and trade exposure. However, there are gender gaps in access to early opportunities, mainly relevant technical experience and network connections. Providing information on earnings is a low-cost intervention that can encourage young women to crossover to more lucrative trades, thereby reducing the gender gap in earnings.