The impact of husbands' involvement in goal‐setting training on women's empowerment: First evidence from an intervention among female microfinance borrowers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Offering women access to microcredit and business training is a prominent approach to stimulate women's empowerment. Whereas men seem to profit from business training, women do not. We adjusted a goal‐setting training session on the basis of women's needs in collaboration with a women organization in Sri Lanka. We invited female microfinance borrowers and their husbands to the training as both parties should be involved to change existing gender roles with respect to their income‐generating activity. We investigated the impact of the training on goal‐setting skills, self‐esteem, and the couples' interaction in a subsequent task. In two field experiments, female borrowers and their husbands (nstudy1 = 68; nstudy2 = 76) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (a) goal‐setting training and setting goals as couple, (b) goal‐setting training and setting goals individually, or (c) no training (control condition). Participation in the training increased women's SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time bound) goal‐setting skills. We coded couples' interactions in a subsequent decision‐making task to assess signs of women's empowerment. Descriptively, we found some initial evidence of increased women's empowerment in the interaction (Study 2). We critically discuss results and how gendered power imbalances may need to be addressed to stimulate social change towards gender equity.

A relational perspective on women’s empowerment: Intimate partner violence and empowerment among women entrepreneurs in Vietnam

“…Previous research shows that women borrowers may experience more IPV compared to non‐borrowers (Rahman, Hoque, & Makinoda, ). Some men may exert IPV to regain greater control that stems from the breaking of traditional gender roles (for a discussion, see Dutt et al , ; Huis, Hansen, Otten, & Lensink, ). Furthermore, giving women a financial resource such as microloan may or may not enable them to have a stronger say with respect to financial decision‐making.…”

All Human, yet Different

“…As mentioned above this is a very abstract construct, used in the public sphere. To find out what kind of meaning this construct carries and what it would entail in a given cultural context, we asked women in in-depth interviews or focus group discussions to describe and share stories about a strong woman in their community, what she looks like, how she lives, and what she does (action), and name a strong woman they know (e.g., Huis et al, 2019;Kurtis ß et al, 2016). In another project, we asked women to share their advice for their daughter, or what kind of future they envision for them.…”

“…We expected that inviting couples to the training should strengthen the position of women in this cultural context more than inviting women alone (Huis et al, 2019). Prior to the training, we visited couples at home but interviewed them separately.…”

“…We recommend establishing a partnership between academic researchers and local partners that are based on shared responsibility and control over ideas, processes, and outcomes (for an example of a research partnership to inform and improve research and practice see Numans et al, 2019). An egalitarian dialogue, regular meetings, and communication between all parties are essential (e.g., see the critical communicative methodology to overcome inequalities; Gómez et al, 2010; Huis et al., 2019).…”

“…Besides using self-reports, behavioral observations can offer important insights around the world. For example, inviting people to an interview, offering them a sweet, and observing how they dispose of the wrapping as an indicator of littering (e.g., Farage et al, 2020) or the coding of couple interactions during a task to investigate the relational dynamics and signs of agency can offer meaningful and relevant insights of behavior (e.g., Huis et al, 2019).…”