World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Template
Basic Data:
Title Fostering Women's Economic Inclusion with Edutainment and Behavioral Nudges in Mauritius
Linked Project ID P171809 Product Line RA
Applied Amount ($) $230,000 Est. Project Period 03/15/2020i -06/30/2021**ii Team Leader(s) Marco Ranzani, Managing Unit DECPI Eeshani Kandpal, Isis Gaddis
Contributing unit(s) EA1PV, DECPI, HGNDR
Funding Window Poverty and Shared Prosperity
Regions/Countries Country/Countries (please Mauritius specify)
General:
1. What is the Development Objective (or main objective) of this Grant?
The objective of this proposal is to assess whether exposing low educated married women who do not participate in the labor force and their husbands/partners to an educational entertainment (or “edutainment”) program can change individual preferences, perception of social norms, and ultimately behaviors related to women’s participation in the labor market. The edutainment program will promote a positive image of working women as well as of husbands that share responsibilities for household chores with their working wives in an entertaining format that is relatable at an emotional level. This will be accompanied by behavioral nudges with the goal of providing psychological tools to thrive through the journey of looking for a job. By studying the interaction between these two interventions, the project will contribute to the emerging literature linking aspirations, agency, and pathways.
The objective of this proposal builds on the findings of a series of analytical pieces delivered by the Poverty and Equity GP over the past 4 FYs. Inequality has increased in Mauritius over the past decade and this has held back progress in poverty reduction. An in-depth analysis of the root causes of rising inequality identifies gender gaps in the labor market as one of the causes, together with a very rapid increase in the demand for high-skill labor that outpaced the increase in supply. As of 2018, the labor force participation rate among women remained low at 45 percent, compared to 73 percent among men. A sizeable gender gap emerges from the ages of 20-25 years onwards, as women get married, have children and often drop out of the labor force. Over 65 percent of inactive women have at best achieved a certificate of primary education (CPE) and 1 in 2 belong to households that are in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. Harnessing the potential of all, including women, is therefore key to unleashing the full productivity potential of
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countries like Mauritius that are facing rapid aging of their population and have large gender gaps, and to ensuring that benefits of growth are widely shared.
2. Summary description of Grant financed activities
The grant will support the design and implementation of the edutainment program and behavioral intervention, the baseline survey and the first follow-up survey.
3. What are the main risks related to the Grant financed activity? Are there any potential conflicts of interest for the Bank? How will these risks/conflicts be monitored and managed?
There are no substantial risks to the grant financed activity. The ASA project, P171809, is approved; the team has established close working relationships with the relevant government counterparts (the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations, Employment and Training, the Economic Development Board, etc.), thanks to the continuous support provided over the past 4 years through both analytical work and technical assistance. The implementation of the third and fourth follow-up surveys, which will allow to measure medium and long- term effects of the interventions, are conditional on receiving financing through the G²LM|LIC program or other channels. Some implementation delays associated with the hiring of firms to produce the edutainment intervention and collect baseline and follow up data are possible. However, this risk is considered minimal, as the team has already contacted several media and survey firms, and built additional lead time into the proposal, as per the guidance received during the consultation process, to minimize any delays. The team does not foresee any potential conflicts of interest.
4. (Optional question) What can/has been done to find an alternative source of financing, i.e. instead of a Bank administered Grant?
The proposal has the support of Bank budget under the ASA code (P171809). The team is seeking additional funding to support the full research project from the IZA/DFID Programme on Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries (G²LM|LIC) and potentially other funding sources.
KCPIII Specific:
1. How does (do) the objective(s) of this proposal align with the World Bank Group’s twin goals? What are the key thematic research questions being addressed in this research?
Alignment with the World Bank Group’s twin goals. Narrowing gender gaps is not just desirable from a social equity perspective, but it is also associated with higher growth, more favorable development outcomes, and lower inequality. The intervention holds significant promise for using unconventional interventions, such as edutainment and behavioral nudges, in low and middle income countries in Africa or Asia with low levels of female labor force participation, especially among households at the bottom of the welfare distribution, and traditional gender norms as a tool to change social norms, increase female labor force participation and promote economic inclusion. Identifying paths that can foster women’s inclusion in the labor market can help improve the livelihoods of low-income households. In addition, raising women’s participation in the labor market can increase GDP growth and make up for population. While it is
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methodologically challenging to estimate or simulate reliable effects of gender gaps on economic performance, a large body of theoretical and empirical work suggests that narrowing gender gaps in human capital and labor market outcomes can improve economic performance – for example, by allowing for a more productive use of female labor and through positive externalities on children’s human capital (see Klasen 2002; Klasen and Lamanna 2009; ILO 2017; McKinsey Global Institute 2015; Bertay et al 2018; Klasen 2018). This is in line with the twin goals adopted in 2013 by the World Bank Group: to end extreme poverty globally by 2030, and to promote shared prosperity in every country by improving the living standards of the bottom 40 percent of the population in every country. The project also supports the strategic objectives of the World Bank Group’s Gender Strategy, especially those related to removing constraints for more and better jobs among women and improving women’s voice and agency. It further contributes to at least 3 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that in September 2015 the member states of the United Nations adopted together with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular, the project would contribute to achieve SDG 5, SDG 8, and SDG 10 that focus on promoting gender equality, decent work and economic growth for all, and reducing inequalities.
Motivation and Key Thematic Research Questions. Despite the progress achieved over the last quarter of a century, still today women are globally less likely to participate in the labor market than men. At 48.5 per cent in 2018, women’s global labor force participation rate is 26.5 percentage points lower than that of men (table 1). The gender gap is closing in high-income countries (ILO 2019), where in 2018 it stood at 15 percentage points. By contrast, the gap is still considerable in low- and middle-income countries. In 2018 the highest participation rate for women was 64 per cent in low income countries, mainly driven by poor economic conditions and lack of social protection system that make women’s contribution to family income a necessity, and it was as low as 35 percent in middle income countries. It is especially large in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
Gender gaps in labor market participation are ascribable to a number of factors that together with life-cycle circumstances, the ILO (2017) has grouped into three broad categories: (i) personal preferences, (ii) socio-economic constraints, and (iii) gender role conformity. All three groups of factors are ultimately affected by the prevailing social norms in the society where women live. Women’s preference for engaging in paid work is also the by-product of what is perceived to be legitimate in her personal circumstances and the social context. Socio-economic constraints are a set of institutional, economic and physical constraints that can affect the likelihood of participating in the labor market of both men and women. For example, the legal framework of the tax system might disincentivize the work of women if it imposes higher marginal tax rates on secondary earners; lack of affordable child (and other family members in need) care facilities is a burden for households as a whole, but it ultimately affects women due to their assigned role of caregivers. In addition, discrimination in terms of payment, hiring, promotion further contributes to create gender gaps. Policies themselves are to some extent the by-product of social norms and can affect socio-economic constraints and reinforce social norms. The role of norms in determining gender roles is not to be underestimated: some norm-driven outcomes appear very difficult to alter; female household bargaining power, labor force participation, and child malnutrition are two classic examples that do not necessarily change with increases in income (Haddad et al. 2003), access to information (Kabeer 1999), or other social interventions (Lokshin et al. 2005). On the other hand, increasing evidence suggests that these very outcomes change rapidly under changing social norms or expectations (Munshi and Myaux 2006, Jensen and Oster2009, Chong and La Ferrara 2009, La Ferrara, Chong, and Duryea 2012).
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Table 1. Labor force participation rates, global and by country income group, level in 2018 and changes during 1993- 2023.
Note: “Youth” refers to ages 15–24, “Adult” to ages 25+.
Source: ILO, 2019.
While the above highlights the salience of social norms for women’s participation in the labor market, an emerging body of literature suggests that social norms can be reshaped using specific interventions – for example by providing information which induce people to update their beliefs or by modeling different types of behavior (La Ferrara 2016).
The project will address three main research questions, which are linked to the KCP’s thematic focus areas of gender and poverty: (1) Can an edutainment program that promotes a positive image of working women as well as of husbands sharing responsibilities for household chores change social norms regarding women’s work outside the family home and women’s preferences for such work and aspirations (assessed within a short time period after the intervention)? (2) What are the effects of such a program on job search, availability to work, and employment status of women (assessed over the medium to long term)? (3) Can the effectiveness of the edutainment program be enhanced through a behavioral intervention that seeks to provide women with the psychological tools required in looking for and starting a new job?
2. Describe analytic design & methodology. Elaborate on hypotheses, conceptual framework, data (survey design if applicable).
The proposed interventions will be tested in the case of Mauritius, which is a particularly interesting country context. First, Mauritius has closed education gaps, with girls outstripping boys in schooling outcomes among young generations. According to data from 2016, out of a student population of 33,269 in tertiary education, 56.6 percent are female and
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43.4 percent male (Tertiary Education Commission 2017). Second, the country has successfully addressed discriminatory laws and regulations that limit women's equality of opportunity. In 2019, Mauritius features among the 6 top reforming countries with a score of 91.88 in the ranking published in the World Bank Women, Business and the Law 2019 (World Bank Group 2019). In 2013, Mauritius passed a law on equal remuneration for work of equal value that imposes a duty on every employer and in 2015 paid maternity leave was increased from 12 to 14 weeks. Recent reforms include the introduction of civil remedies for sexual harassment at work and of paid paternity leave, the prohibition of dismissal of pregnant workers and of discrimination in access to credit based on gender. Yet, the high achievements of girls and young women in school and recent legislative progress are not carrying over to employment opportunities. In 2018, the female labor force participation remained low at 45 percent compared to 73 percent among men. Over 65 percent of inactive women have at best achieved a certificate of primary education (CPE) and 1 in 2 belong to households that are in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. When asked about the main reason why they are not engaged in the labor market, most inactive women with up to completed primary education mention household and family responsibilities. In addition, according to data from AfroBarometer (2017), 7 in 10 Mauritians report that it is better for a family if a woman has the main responsibility of home and children care and almost half of Mauritians agrees with the statement that men should be given preference when it comes to jobs. This highlights the salience of cultural values and social norms, which assign to Mauritian women traditional roles as providers of children and elderly care and with responsibilities for a broad range of nonmarket or domestic activities and are an import constraint to women’s engagement in paid work.
First, the team will administer the edutainment program to a randomly selected target population, namely low educated inactive married women between 25 and 40 years of age and their husbands, in 4 districts with different relative development indexes. The edutainment program will promote a positive image of working women with a similar socio- economic background and of husbands that share household chores’ responsibilities with their working wives that they can take as role models. Women and their husbands will be randomly assigned to a treatment group (screening of the edutainment movie) or a control group (screening of a placebo movie). The placebo movie is important to remove any potential effect from going to the movie theater. Within each district, the team will identify a location suitable for a movie screening (e.g. a school or community center) and then invite individuals living in proximity to the screening location to join a movie screening during the weekend. Those individuals that show up will be asked to provide core demographic data and asked if they would be interested to participate in a study with their spouse/partner. Participation in the intervention will be incentivized using a lottery. Among those individuals agreeing to participate, the team will select those that meet the selection criteria, namely women, who are between 25 and 40 years of age, married, with low levels of education (certificate of primary education or lower educational attainments) and not employed, and their husbands or partners.
Second, increasing women’s aspirations and changing their husbands’ beliefs about sharing households’ responsibilities through edutainment may not be enough if these women cannot visualize a pathway and employ strategies to achieve their aspirations. This is particularly relevant after being out of the labor market for a considerable period, or facing traditional social norms that prescribe entering into specific occupations. This is where the behavioral intervention
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comes into play. Therefore, inactive women could benefit from training that provides psychological tools to thrive through the journey of looking for a job, concretely in three successive areas:
• to foster initial motivation and positive self-perception through gratitude, belonging, growth mindset, and self-efficacy activities (Froh et al. 2008; Yeager et al. 2016; Walton and Cohen 2011); • to teach planning and goal setting techniques in a more actionable and feasible manner, encouraging resilience and sustained motivation (Duckworth et al. 2011; Locke and Latham 2002); • to social-emotional skills for better interaction in the environment of a new job (Guerra et al 2014).
Out of all those that meet the criteria in each of the 4 districts, half will be assigned to a group that receives only the media intervention (edutainment or placebo), while the other half will also be offered the behavioral intervention. The behavioral intervention will be implemented in the weeks following the screening of the edutainment movie. This design will allow to evaluate the edutainment intervention separately (against a placebo) and its interaction with the behavioral intervention.
Individuals selected to participate in the study will be interviewed for a baseline survey ahead of the interventions, soliciting information about core household demographics, labor market participation, preferences/aspirations, and perceptions of social norms. In addition, individuals will be administered a survey days after the movie screening to collect data on perceptions of social norms and preferences/aspirations. Mid-line data will be collected approximately 6 months after the interventions to assess both medium-term outcomes. The last follow up will be conducted about one year after the interventions to assess the trajectory of impacts over time. The outcomes of the project will be a measured change in (i) perception of social norms, (ii) individual preferences and aspirations, (iii) job search and availability to work and (iv) employment status. Items (i) and (ii) are short-term indicators (assessed within days or weeks of exposure to the intervention), while (iii) and (iv) will be measured between 6 and 12 months after the intervention.
The sample size will be approximately 500 married women and 500 husbands in each of the 4 districts, with multiple screening locations in each district, for a total of about 4,000 individuals at baseline and each follow-up. In terms of randomization within districts versus across districts, the team proposes to randomize within districts. This approach lifts concerns about unobserved districts effects which may otherwise bias the results with randomization across districts.
3. Provide a literature review & explain study’s intellectual merit.
A burgeoning body of evidence suggests that edutainment programs can be an effective tool to affect multiple outcomes, such as shifting attitudes, changing perceived social norms and generate behavioral changes in several spheres and contexts (for extensive reviews of the literature, see DellaVigna and La Ferrara 2015, and La Ferrara 2016). For example, recent evidence shows that screening the Queen of Katwe movie improved students’ performance in a national exam in Uganda (Riley 2018), and exposure to Sesame Street improved school performance in the United States (Kearney and Levine 2019). Similarly, exposure to a TV series that aimed at providing information and changing attitudes towards HIV/AIDS led to less risky sexual behavior among young adults in Nigeria (Banerjee, La Ferrara and Orozco-Olvera 2019b). In Ethiopia, watching documentaries about people who had succeeded in agriculture or small businesses increased aspirations and translated into changes in credit and savings behavior among treated individuals (Bernard, Dercon, Orkin and Taffesse 2014). In the areas of family outcomes, exposure to soap operas in Brazil led to a significant decrease in
Page 6 of 13 World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Template fertility and higher rates of divorce and separation (La Ferrara, Chong, and Duryea 2012; Chong and La Ferrara 2009), while the introduction of the TV show ‘16 and pregnant’ reduced teen childbearing in the United States (Kearney and Levine 2015). Moreover, TV or radio exposure led to improvements in women’s bargaining power within the household in India and Cambodia (Jensen and Oster 2009, Cheung 2012), lower son preference (Jensen and Oster 2009), and lower acceptability of domestic violence among some groups in India and Nigeria (Jensen and Oster 2009, Banerjee, La Ferrara and Orozco-Olvera 2019a). Other media effects have been found in relation to entrepreneurship (Bjorvatn et al 2019); financial decisions (Berg and Zia 2017); aspirations and microenterprise performance (Lybbert and Wydick 2018); household decisions to adopt nutritional innovations (Banerjee, Barnhardt, and Duflo 2015); knowledge and perceptions about a public antipoverty program (Ravallion et al 2015); perceived norms related to intergroup prejudice and conflict (Paluck 2009), and willingness to express dissent to authority (Paluck and Green 2009). Besides edutainment, the feasibility of changing social norms through interventions is highlighted by Bursztyn, Gonzales and Yanagizawa-Drott (2018), who show that ‘correcting’ perceptions about social norms at the community level (by providing evidence to young married men in Saudi Arabia that most of the peers privately support female labor force participation) increases the willingness of these men to let their wives join the labor force. However, in other context, norms and behaviors have proven less amenable to interventions. For example, video testimonials of working women and their family members did not make young women’s family members more supportive of them working in India (Dean and Jayachandran 2019). Likewise, in Egypt, an edutainment program broadcasted on a popular Egyptian TV channel, whilst having some impact on attitudes towards self-employment, did not affect professional aspirations and choices (Barsoum et al 2017). The proposed project makes two main contributions to the literature. First, to the best of our knowledge, the edutainment approach has so far not been used to address preferences and prevailing social norms about women’s participation in the labor market. The project seeks to close this knowledge gap by designing an intervention that exposes low-educated women and their husbands/partners to an edutainment program that promotes a positive image of working women with a similar socio-economic background and of husbands that share household chores’ responsibilities with their working wives that they can take as role models. Second, the intervention will be interacted with a behavioral intervention, which will teach low-educated women concrete and actionable psychological strategies to improve socio-emotional skills for a sustained job search and application, through a training and mentoring approach. The underlying hypothesis is that increasing women’s aspirations and changing their husbands’ beliefs about sharing households’ responsibilities through edutainment may not be enough if these women cannot visualize a pathway and employ strategies to achieve their aspirations, which is where the behavioral intervention comes into play. Thereby the project will contribute to the growing literature linking aspirations, agency and pathways (e.g. Lybbert and Wydick 2018).
4. Describe Implementation arrangements. Identify timeline, key team members and their roles. If the partnership is involved, describe the partnership arrangements, and the respective responsibility of Bank units and partners.
Implementation plan • Phase 1 – design of the interventions • Phase 2 – baseline data collection and implementation of the interventions
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• Phase 3 – post-intervention data collection, analysis of data, paper write-up and dissemination
Timeline
The project started with focus group discussion held in October 2019.
• March 2020 – June 2020
o Edutainment and behavioral nudges design (scripts and movie production) • July 2020 – October 2020
o baseline data collection, o screening of the edutainment video and behavioral intervention, o first follow-up data collection. • November 2020 - January 2021
o data analysis (baseline and first follow-up), o estimation of effect on changes in perceptions of social norms regarding women’s work outside home, o draft of first research paper. • February 2021 – June 2021
o second follow-up data collection to measure the effect on women’s labor force participation in the medium-term,
o finalization of second research paper, o parallel dissemination efforts. Contingent on the availability of additional (non-KCP) funding sources and estimated impact of the intervention at the time of the second follow-up, the team may conduct a third follow up about one year after the intervention (i.e. 6 months after the second follow up).
Team composition - Marco Ranzani – TTL Economist, Poverty and Equity Global Practice - Eeshani Kandpal – co-TTL Economist, DECPI - Isis Gaddis – co-TTL Senior Economist, Gender Global Themes Department - Kathleen Beegle – Lead Economist, Gender Global Themes Department - Jose Luis Castaneda Nunez – Economist, Poverty and Equity Global Practice and eMBeD Team - Annamaria Milazzo – Senior Researcher and Consultant, Africa Gender Innovation Lab - Victor Hugo Orozco Olvera – Economist, DECIE - Verena Tandrayen-Ragoobur – Associate Professor, University of Mauritius
The project will be co-task team led by Marco Ranzani (Economist, Poverty and Equity GP), Isis Gaddis (Senior Economist, Gender Global Themes Department), and Eeshani Kandpal (Economist, DECPI). The team will work closely with Kathleen Beegle (Lead Economist, Gender Global Themes Department), Victor Hugo Orozco Olvera (Economist DECIE) and Jose
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Luis Castaneda Nunez (Economist, Poverty and Equity Global Practice and eMBeD Team), who will provide technical leadership and guidance as well as lead the behavioral component of the project. Other team members will include: Annamaria Milazzo (Senior Researcher and Consultant, Africa Gender Innovation Lab) and Verena Tandrayen-Ragoobur (Associate Professor, University of Mauritius). As appropriate, the team may hire additional consultants.
In addition to leveraging expertise available internally with staff from DEC, the Poverty and Equity Global Practice, the Gender Global Themes Department, the Africa Gender Innovation Lab, and the eMBeD team, the project has been externally endorsed by the counterparts in Mauritius, including the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations, Employment and Training, and the Mauritius Economic Development Board that operates under the aegis of the Prime Minister’s Office. In addition, the project team will work along with researchers at the University of Mauritius.
5. Outline the expected outputs (working paper, publication, computational/analytical tools, datasets, etc.) and specify the expected date of delivery for each output.
The main outputs of the project will be:
(1) one paper on the short-term effect of edutainment and behavioral nudges on individual preferences as well as perceptions of social norms – January 2021; (2) one paper on the medium-run effects of edutainment and behavioral nudges on job search, availability to work and employment status of targeted women – June 2021; (3) survey instruments and microdata sets, baseline and first follow-up – January 2021; (4) survey instruments and microdata sets, second follow up – June 2021; (5) two non-technical policy briefs and two blog posts – June 2021;
6. Describe the beneficiary of the research, the relevance for policy in developing (or transition) countries and for WBG Operations. Outline dissemination plans, including plans to reach policy makers.
Given the progress made so far in reducing the gender participation gap and the commitment of the Government of Mauritius to proceed further along this path by making childcare more accessible and affordable, changing perceptions of social norms remains a critical area of focus to empower women to engage in economic activities. The government of Mauritius values World Bank Group analysis and advisory support that is increasingly financed through Reimbursable Advisory Services (RAS) arrangements to achieve program objectives. Currently, among the 6 active RASs, the RAS aimed at supporting the 9 years of continuous basic education reform is connected to the proposed edutainment intervention whose objective is translating human capital investments into income opportunities for women in poor and low-income households.
The edutainment program and behavioral nudges that this proposal aims to assess could be easily brought to scale with financing from the Government of Mauritius and technical assistance from the World Bank. If effective, the program could be screened on Mauritian national television, thereby reaching a much larger audience. Moreover, if successful, the intervention holds significant promise for using edutainment programs in countries with similar characteristics,
Page 9 of 13 World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Template including middle-income countries in North Africa and Middle East, South Asia and Latin America with low levels of female labor force participation and traditional gender norms, as a tool to change social norms, increase female labor force participation, promote economic inclusion, and ultimately boost shared prosperity.
To promote knowledge about the intervention among World Bank staff working on these countries, the team will host BBLs (with webex connection to country offices), and prepare a range of short communication materials (briefs, blog posts, etc.). In addition, submitting the two papers to the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series and then to peer-reviewed academic journals and presenting the research findings at academic and policy-oriented conferences will increase visibility in the academic and policy community.
7. Describe the capacity building components, including the collaboration with local partners, researchers from developing countries.
The team comprises researchers of the University of Mauritius (professor Verena Tandrayen-Ragoobur) and will hire local consultants (Master/PhD students) that will help with data cleaning and econometric analysis.
8. Document evidence of the consultation process with relevant research and operations units. E.g. consultation conducted, comments received, & how comments were addressed. TTLs should also describe plans to maintain operational and research consultation.
This proposal underwent an extensive consultation process inside and outside the World Bank. The proposal was jointly developed by staff from three World Bank units – the Development Economics Research Group, the Poverty and Equity Global Practice and the Gender Group. In addition, the team has consulted with staff from the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (Michael B. O'Sullivan; Aletheia Amalia Donald) and the Development Impact Evaluation team (DIME) (Victor Hugo Orozco Olvera). The corresponding ASA project (P171809; BB funded) “Mauritius: Youth and Women Inclusion and Using Data for Decision-Making” underwent a formal concept note review on October 1, 2019. The chair and the peer-reviewers expressed their support for the intervention but raised concerns about the feasibility of executing the edutainment and behavioral components and completing their impact evaluation by the end of FY20. As a result, the team clarified and re-assessed the timeline of the proposed intervention. The edutainment and behavioral interventions will now be completed by October 2020, and the second-follow up data collection (to evaluate medium-term outcomes) will take place between February and June 2021. The concept note was approved by the Country Director on October 8, 2019. During a recent mission to Mauritius in October 2019, the team presented the proposed edutainment and behavioral interventions to several government agencies and other stakeholders, including the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations, Employment and Training, the Ministry of Youth, the Ministry of Gender, the Economic Development Board and Business Mauritius. The Government of Mauritius was supportive of the intervention though it advised that the edutainment program would have to be tailored to the local context. The team has already undertaken several steps in this direction, especially focus group discussions (FGDs) with the target population (low educated women) to better understand the underlying social norms that constrain labor market opportunities for these women. The draft proposal was revised to reflect the insights from these FGDs. For example, the discussions revealed social norms stigmatizing husband’s unpaid work inside the family home as a major constraint to female labor force participation. As a result, the team decided to address this particular social norm in the edutainment
Page 10 of 13 World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Template intervention (by featuring husbands that share household chores’ responsibilities) and to screen the program to both wives and husbands. Finally, the team is collaborating with external senior researchers with in-depth knowledge in the analysis of social norms (Annamaria Milazzo) and the Mauritian country context (Verena Tandrayen-Ragoobur).
References
AfroBarometer. 2017. “Summary of Results. Afrobarometer Round 7 Survey in Mauritius, 2017.” StraConsult Ltd. Available at: https://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Summary%20of%20results/mau_r7_sor.pdf
Banerjee, Abhijit, Eliana La Ferrara, and Victor H. Orozco-Olvera 2019a. “Entertainment, Education, and Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence.” AEA Papers and Proceedings 109: 133-37.
Banerjee, Abhijit, Eliana La Ferrara, and Victor H. Orozco-Olvera. 2019b. “The Entertaining Way to Behavioral Change: Fighting HIV with MTV.” NBER Working Paper No. 26096. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.
Banerjee, Abhijit, Sharon Barnhardt, and Esther Duflo. 2015. “Movies, Margins and Marketing: Encouraging the Adoption of Iron-Fortified Salt.” NBER Working Paper No. 21616. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.
Barsoum, Ghada, Bruno Crépon, Drew Gardiner, Bastien Michel and William Pariente. 2017. „Evaluating the Effects of Entrepreneurship Edutainment in Egypt.” Available at: http://conference.iza.org/conference_files/EVAL_2017/michel_b25409.pdf
Berg, Gunhild and Bilal Zia. 2017. “Harnessing Emotional Connections to Improve Financial Decisions: Evaluating the Impact of Financial Education in Mainstream Media.” Journal of the European Economic Association 15(15): 1025-55.
Bernard, Tanguy, Stefan Dercon, Kate Orkin, and Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse. 2014. “The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Forward-Looking Behaviour in Rural Ethiopia.” Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/Feature%20Story/Africa/afr-tanguy-bernard.pdf
Bertay, Ata Can, Ljubica Dordevic and Can Sever. 2018. “Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from Industry-Level Data.” Available at: https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2019/preliminary/paper/N8kTG95d
Bjorvatn, Kjetil, Alexander W. Cappelen, Linda Helgesson Sekeiz, Erik Ø. Sørensen and Bertil Tungodden. 2019. “Teaching through Television: Experimental Evidence on Entrepreneurship Education in Tanzania.” Available at: https://www.nhh.no/contentassets/c1be294f0fd74a34acf88de0590ca6a6/mmruka_paper.pdf
Bursztyn, Leonardo, Alessandra L. Gonzalez and David Yanagizawa-Drott. 2018. “Misperceived Social Norms: Female Labor Force Participation in Saudi Arabia.” Available at: http://home.uchicago.edu/bursztyn/Misperceived_Norms_2018_06_20.pdf
Cheung, Maria. 2012. “Edutainment Radio, Women's Status and Primary School Participation: Evidence from Cambodia.” Available at: http://www2.ne.su.se/paper/wp12_05.pdf
Chong, Alberto and Eliana La Ferrara. 2009. “Television and Divorce: Evidence from Brazilian Novelas.” Journal of the European Economic Association 7(2-3): 458-68.
Dean, Joshua T. and Seema Jayachandran. 2019. “Changing Family Attitudes to Promote Female Employment.” AEA Papers and Proceedings 109: 138-42.
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DellaVigna, Stefano and Eliana La Ferrara. 2015. “Chapter 19 – Economic and Social Impacts of the Media.” Handbook of Media Economics Vol. 1, 723-68.
Duckworth, Angela Lee, Heidi Grant, Benjamin Loew, Gabriele Oettingen and Peter M. Gollwitzer. 2011. “Self- regulation Strategies Improve Self-discipline in Adolescents: Benefits of Mental Contrasting and Implementation Intentions.” Educational Psychology 31(1): 17-26.
Froh, Jeffrey J., William J. Sefick and Robert A. Emmons. 2008. “Counting Blessings in Early Adolescents: An Experimental Study of Gratitude and Subjective Well-being.” Journal of School Psychology 46: 213-33.
Guerra, Nancy, Kathryn Modecki and Wendy Cunningham. 2014. “Developing Social-Emotional Skills for the Labor Market: The PRACTICE Model.” Policy Research Working Paper 7123. World Bank, Washington, DC.
Haddad, Lawrence, Harold Alderman, Simon Appleton, Lina Song, Yisehac Yohannes. 2003. “Reducing Child Malnutrition: How Far Does Income Growth Take Us?” World Bank Economic Review 17(1): 107-31.
ILO (International Labour Organization). 2017. “World Employment Social Outlook: Trends for Women 2017.” International Labour Office, Geneva.
ILO (International Labour Organization). 2019. “World Employment Social Outlook: Trends 2019.” International Labour Office, Geneva.
Jensen, Robert and Emily Oster. 2009. “The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women’s Status in India.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(3): 1057-94.
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Page 12 of 13 World Bank Knowledge for Change Program – Full Proposal Template
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Yeager, David S., Carissa Romero, Dave Paunesku, Christopher S. Hulleman, Barbara Schneider, Cintia Hinojosa, Hae Yeon Lee, Joseph O’Brien, Kate Flint, Alice Roberts, Jill Trott, Daniel Greene, Gregory M. Walton, and Carol S. Dweck. 2016. “Using Design Thinking to Improve Psychological Interventions: The Case of the Growth Mindset During the Transition to High School.” Journal of Educational Psychology 108 (3): 374-91.
Disbursement Projection
From Date i To Date ii Amount March 2020 June 2020 74,000 July 2020 June 2021 176,000
Note: i For approved proposals, fund will be transferred in February 2020. ii KCP III projects’ closing date can’t go beyond June 30, 2021.
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