Cash for Women's Empowerment? A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of the Government of Zambia's Child Grant Program
Cash for Women's Empowerment? A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of the Government of Zambia's Child Grant Program
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DOI：
10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.02.017
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发表时间：
2017-07-01
影响因子：
6.9
通讯作者：
Seidenfeld, David
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bonilla, Juan;Zarzur, Rosa Castro;Seidenfeld, David
从广义上讲，赋予妇女权力是发展中国家社会现金转移方案经常提到的目标和好处。尽管现金转移在增强妇女权能方面有希望和潜力，但支持这一结果的证据好坏参半。此外，撒哈拉以南非洲的大规模方案几乎没有证据。我们对赞比亚政府的儿童补助金方案进行了混合方法评估，该方案是一项针对贫困的无条件转移，提供给0至5岁幼儿的母亲或主要照顾者。定量部分是在三个农村地区进行的为期四年的纵向聚类随机对照试验，定性部分是一次性的数据收集，涉及对妇女及其伴侣进行深入访谈，并根据婚姻状况和项目参与情况进行分层。我们的研究发现，受益家庭中的妇女正在做出更多的单独或联合决策（在九个领域中的五个领域）;然而，影响转化为妇女参与的决策领域数量的相对适度增加，平均增加0.34（或比基线平均值5.3增加6%）。定性，我们发现，家庭内部关系的变化受到根深蒂固的性别规范的限制，这些规范表明男性是户主和主要决策者。然而，妇女的叙述表明，这种转移增加了财政权力，因为她们能够保留对家庭投资和紧急储蓄转移的控制权。我们强调在使用家庭内部决策作为衡量赋权的主要指标方面的方法挑战。结果显示，无条件现金转移方案有可能改善女性受益人的财务和家庭内部状况，但很可能需要额外的设计组件进行转型变革。(C)2017年，作者。爱思唯尔有限公司出版
The empowerment of women, broadly defined, is an often-cited objective and benefit of social cash transfer programs in developing countries. Despite the promise and potential of cash transfers to empower women, the evidence supporting this outcome is mixed. In addition, there is little evidence from programs at scale in sub-Saharan Africa. We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of the Government of Zambia's Child Grant Program, a poverty-targeted, unconditional transfer given to mothers or primary caregivers of young children aged zero to five. The quantitative component was a four-year longitudinal clustered-randomized control trial in three rural districts, and the qualitative component was a one-time data collection involving in-depth interviews with women and their partners stratified on marital status and program participation. Our study found that women in beneficiary households were making more sole or joint decisions (across five out of nine domains); however, impacts translated into relatively modest increases in the number of decision domains a woman is involved in, on average by 0.34 (or a 6% increase over a baseline mean of 5.3). Qualitatively, we found that changes in intrahousehold relationships were limited by entrenched gender norms, which indicate men as heads of household and primary decision makers. However, women's narratives showed the transfer increased financial empowerment as they were able to retain control over transfers for household investment and savings for emergencies. We highlight methodological challenges in using intrahousehold decision making as the primary indicator to measure empowerment. Results show potential for unconditional cash transfer programs to improve the financial and intrahousehold status of female beneficiaries, however it is likely additional design components are need for transformational change. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.