Publication: Global Evidence on Context and Agency Interventions to Empower Women and Girls
Loading...
Date
2023-07-25
ISSN
Published
2023-07-25
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
As gender equity becomes more central to social and economic development, practitioners are increasingly focused on women and girls’ empowerment as a sustainable way to enhance well-being and close gender gaps. The operational approach to women and girls’ empowerment can guide practitioners in systematically translating the concept of empowerment into project designs. While World Bank projects are fairly effective at providing women and girls with the resources they need to reach their desired achievements, interventions that affect agency and context are much more scarce. This literature review is intended to provide a curated set of examples of interventions that aim to affect the context and agency factors impeding women’s and girls’ empowerment. The paper starts from the assumption that practitioners are increasingly convinced of the importance of addressing the three pillars of empowerment, but they are unfamiliar with evidence-based context and agency interventions. Information about effective initiatives is dispersed, often leaving task teams to start from zero rather than drawing on prior experience. This paper sorts through the literature and presents some of the most effective examples of agency and context interventions in developing countries.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2023. Global Evidence on Context and Agency Interventions to Empower Women and Girls. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40078 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Voice and Agency : Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2014)The 2012 World Development Report recognized that expanding women's agency - their ability to make decisions and take advantage of opportunities is key to improving their lives as well as the world. This report represents a major advance in global knowledge on this critical front. The vast data and thousands of surveys distilled in this report cast important light on the nature of constraints women and girls continue to face globally. This report identifies promising opportunities and entry points for lasting transformation, such as interventions that reach across sectors and include life-skills training, sexual and reproductive health education, conditional cash transfers, and mentoring. It finds that addressing what the World Health Organization has identified as an epidemic of violence against women means sharply scaling up engagement with men and boys. The report also underlines the vital role information and communication technologies can play in amplifying women's voices, expanding their economic and learning opportunities, and broadening their views and aspirations. The World Bank Group's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity demand no less than the full and equal participation of women and men, girls and boys, around the world.Publication Empowering Women : Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-11)In societies with widespread gender discrimination, development programs that encourage female participation in local governance can potentially redress gender imbalances in economic, political, and social outcomes. Using a randomized field experiment encompassing 500 Afghan villages, this study finds that a development program which incorporates mandated female participation increases female mobility and involvement in income generation, but does not change female roles in family decision-making or attitudes toward the general role of women in society.Publication Empowering Adolescent Girls in a Crisis Context(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-07)In Sierra Leone, the empowerment and livelihoods for adolescents (ELA) initiative sought to enhance adolescent girls’ social and economic empowerment by providing life skills training, livelihood training, and credit support to start income-generating activities. The Ebola crisis occurred during the project, resulting in curbed implementation. In contrast, younger girls (12 to 17 years old) who resided in communities that benefitted from the program in high Ebola disruption areas were more likely to be in school and saw their numeracy and literacy levels improve. However, as younger women spend less time with men in the presence of ELA, men likely shift their attention to older girls: the evaluation finds an increase in unwanted and transactional sex by older girls in areas highly exposed to the Ebola crisis. As the program was implemented, the Ebola epidemic hit Sierra Leone. First, in an effort to stem the spread of the disease, the government-imposed quarantines, limited travel, and closed public spaces such as markets in certain areas, which significantly impacted the economic activities of men and women. Second, schools were closed for an entire academic year. Finally, Sierra Leone’s limited health resources were diverted into caring for patients and preventing the spread of the epidemic, limiting their ability to attend to other issues such as sexual and reproductive health. These results show how safe spaces interventions can be effective even in the face of large-scale shocks such as Ebola crises as seen in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, as well as other shocks constraining economic and social life, by buffering girls from the adverse effects of crises.Publication Highlights from Africa SPJ: Empowering Women and Girls Through Social Protection(Washington DC, 2023-05-02)Women’s and girls’ empowerment (WGE) is a key priority for the World Bank’s engagement in the Africa region. Gender equality has long been central to the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The Bank has made substantial investments aimed at closing gaps between men and women as well as advancing our understanding of what works to close those gaps. However, only recently has the Bank recognized WGE as a policy goal in its own right. WGE emerged a key strategy for human capital development in Africa in 2019. This highlights the need for guidance and tools to help task teams operationalize the WGE agenda in the regionPublication Interventions to Prevent or Reduce Violence Against Women and Girls : A Systematic Review of Reviews(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) is a pervasive global problem. It is a violation of basic human rights and a drag on development. Much of the research to-date on the topic-including a major recent World Health Organization study to produce global prevalence rates has focused on better understanding the scale and nature of the problem. The present study builds on this body or research while shifting focus to synthesizing global evidence on potential solutions. This paper, a systematic review of reviews, breaks new ground by synthesizing evidence on the effects of VAWG prevention interventions. It examines the diversity of geographical context, the types of violence addressed, and the numerous approaches that have been used to combat VAWG. Additionally the review summarizes the quality of evidence on efficacy and effectiveness in order to highlight strengths and gaps of interventions on a global scale and could serve as a point of reference for those intending to undertake future design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions. This paper finds that knowledge of intervention impacts on VAWG prevention is growing, but is still highly limited. Nonetheless, a small but growing body of rigorously tested interventions demonstrates that preventing VAWG is possible and can achieve large effect sizes. The interventions with the most positive findings used multiple, well-integrated approaches and engaged with multiple stakeholders over time. They also addressed underlying risk factors for violence, including social norms regarding gender dynamics and the acceptability of violence. These examples point to the imperative of greatly increasing investment both in innovative programming in primary prevention, as well as in high-quality experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations to guide international efforts to end VAWG.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication The Journey Ahead(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-31)The Journey Ahead: Supporting Successful Migration in Europe and Central Asia provides an in-depth analysis of international migration in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and the implications for policy making. By identifying challenges and opportunities associated with migration in the region, it aims to inform a more nuanced, evidencebased debate on the costs and benefits of cross-border mobility. Using data-driven insights and new analysis, the report shows that migration has been an engine of prosperity and has helped address some of ECA’s demographic and socioeconomic disparities. Yet, migration’s full economic potential remains untapped. The report identifies multiple barriers keeping migration from achieving its full potential. Crucially, it argues that policies in both origin and destination countries can help maximize the development impacts of migration and effectively manage the economic, social, and political costs. Drawing from a wide range of literature, country experiences, and novel analysis, The Journey Ahead presents actionable policy options to enhance the benefits of migration for destination and origin countries and migrants themselves. Some measures can be taken unilaterally by countries, whereas others require close bilateral or regional coordination. The recommendations are tailored to different types of migration— forced displacement as well as high-skilled and low-skilled economic migration—and from the perspectives of both sending and receiving countries. This report serves as a comprehensive resource for governments, development partners, and other stakeholders throughout Europe and Central Asia, where the richness and diversity of migration experiences provide valuable insights for policy makers in other regions of the world.Publication Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022(Washington, DC, 2022-11)The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.