Female leadership and empowerment: An RCT in Pakistan
Andreas Landmann ⓡ Muhammad Karim ⓡ Waqar Wadho ⓡ Fazal Ali Khan
Abstract
We study how occupying a leadership role in a women-only community-driven development (CDD) program affects women in rural Pakistan. The program organizes rural women into three-tiered local institutions and creates elected leadership positions at each tier. We randomized the treatment across 23 clusters of settlements and sampled 2,298 households from 148 settlements. Because the control group received the program after the midline, we observe leadership selection in both arms, and compare women leading in treatment communities with women who will hold the same positions later. We find that leadership raises women’s perceptions of their own civic and political role by 0.42 standard deviations with larger effects among leaders from poorer households, and some indication of improved access to public goods. We find no significant effects on civic engagement, intra-household decision-making, household’s economic well-being, and social cohesion. The effects attach to the role rather than to selection into it: once control communities receive the program, their leaders converge to treatment levels.