This paper evaluates the impact of "Coding Girls", an educational enrichment program designed to address the underrepresentation of women and girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in Italy by stimulating young female students' interest in programming and...

To understand laws pertaining to gender-based violence (GBV) in countries with high HIV prevalence particularly among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), we reviewed GBV laws and regulations from initial ten eastern and southern African countries participating in the United States...

The persistent underrepresentation of girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields has long been a concern for policymakers and researchers. While factors such as lack of interest or ability have been cited as barriers to girls' enrolment in STEM fields in developed...

This paper evaluates the impact of “Coding Girls”, an educational enrichment program designed to address the underrepresentation of women and girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in Italy by stimulating young female students’ interest in programming and...

This paper evaluates the impact of "Coding Girls", an educational enrichment program designed to address the underrepresentation of women and girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in Italy by stimulating young female students' interest in programming and...

Evidence shows that Guinean women and girls face important barriers across all dimensions of well-being that prevent them from having access to opportunities on an equal footing with men. The poor agency of women and girls, as reflected in the high prevalence of discriminatory legal and social...

This advisory services and analytics (ASA) study focuses on the empowerment of South Sudanese girls and women. The report provides a cohesive overview of the barriers to empowering girls and women in South Sudan, as well as evidence-based programs and strategies that have been successful in the...

This paper evaluates the impact of "Coding Girls", an educational enrichment program designed to address the underrepresentation of women and girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in Italy by stimulating young female students' interest in programming and...

Despite improved access to education and socioeconomic conditions, child marriage remains high in several countries. Part of the problems are norms and perceptions that continue to enable justification of the practice in society. We test the effectiveness of an entertainment-education short...

The authors use data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (C-NLSY79) to examine gender differences in the associations between child behavioral problems and early adult earnings. They find large and significant earnings penalties for women who exhibited more headstrong...

We examine an indirect but potentially deadly consequence of the “missing girls” phenomenon. A shortage of brides causes many parents with sons of marriageable age to work harder and seek higher-paying but potentially dangerous jobs. In response, employers invest less in workplace safety,...

Gender equality has long been central to the World Bank's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. More recently, women's and girls' empowerment (WGE) has become a priority in the Africa region in the context of the region's demographic...

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...

Reducing the gender gap in education is a primary goal for many countries. Two major challenges for many girls are the distance to school and their safety when commuting to school. In Zambia, we studied the impact of providing a bicycle to a school-going girl who lives more than 3 km from the...

Child marriage has lasting negative health, human capital, and welfare consequences. Conflict settings are characterized by a number of complex changes that can potentially increase the risk of child marriage, but there has been limited population-based research directly estimating the...

Women and girls play a key role in agriculture and food systems. Globally, women and girls play an important role in the agricultural labor force across the globe. In addition, women tend to have a predominant role at the household level related to food security. In this context, integrating...

At the onset of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there was global concern about the negative indirect impacts the crisis would have on girls and women and their human capital. Two years into the crisis, this brief summarizes the evidence to date on how the prediction of a shadow crisis has...

Reducing the gender gap in education is a primary goal for many countries. Two major challenges for many girls are the distance to school and their safety when commuting to school. In Zambia, we studied the impact of providing a bicycle to a school-going girl who lives more than 3 km from the...

How can infrastructure help to reduce the gender education gap in developing countries? In this paper, I analyze the complementarity of all-weather roads and a bicycle program in Bihar, India, which aimed to increase girls' secondary school enrollment rate. Using Indian household survey data...

Striking gender gaps persist in fundamental aspects of human welfare. In India, the setting of this paper, these gaps are particularly large. Interventions often target adolescent girls with the aim of empowering them to make choices that go against the status quo – to remain in school longer...

Reducing the gender gap in education is a primary goal for many countries. Some major challenges for many girls include the distance to school, their safety when commuting to school, lack of agency, and deep-rooted cultural norms. In Zambia, we studied the impact of providing a bicycle to a...

Using data from the UK, we show that girls have been affected more than boys by the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of their mental wellbeing. These gender differences are more pronounced in lower-income families. Our results are consistent with previous findings of larger pandemic effects on mental...

We explore the relationship between sibling sex composition, gender inequality and girls' locus of control. Among girls aged 10-15 in China, girls with brothers score lower in locus of control than girls with sisters, i.e., they believe that success depends more on external forces than on their...

Understanding the malleability of gender norms is crucial to address gender inequalities. We study the effect of parenting daughters on a gender role attitude relating to the traditional male breadwinner model: whether the husband should earn and the wife stay at home. We control for other...

We argue, in contrast to the recent literature, that existence of younger sisters can have a positive effect on marriage outcomes for girls in the developing countries. Our explanation is that children there are viewed as intra-household labor force and giving away daughters for marriage is...

Using a staggered installation of sanitary pad vending machines across schools in the Indian state of Kerala, we study the impacts of free monthly access to sanitary pads on girls’ educational outcomes. We find that the number of dropouts among female students in the 7th-grade decrease by 24...

The literature on "missing girls" suggests a net preference for sons both in China and among Chinese immigrants to the West. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that newborn Chinese-American girls are treated more intensively in US hospitals: they are kept longer following delivery, have more medical...

We propose a novel apples-to-apples comparison strategy to identify the effect of boy preference on girls’ physical health from endogenous sibling gender composition. Employing an instrumental variable approach and data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies, we find that the presence of...

This paper empirically evaluates the two opposite representations of the pre-1945 Korean comfort women. Far exceeding the estimate advocated by contract view, the scale of mobilization as estimated using demographic information falls within the range proposed by enslavement view. Indicating one...

Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Against Women (SGBVAW) in India can be traced to structural inequity between women and men based on gender stereotypes and discriminatory norms. Within this context, the spaces that women and girls can safely occupy are limited from childhood through adulthood....

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) often increases after disasters and humanitarian crises. This article presents evidence from Nepal, a country where notable progress has been made on gender equality, but where VAWG continues to be an endemic. The 2015 April earthquake in Nepal led to an...

We propose a novel apples-to-apples comparison strategy to identify the causal effect of son preference on child physical health from endogenous sibling gender composition. Using first-born boy ratio within a community as an instrument and data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies, we find that...

This study investigates the effects of single-sex schooling on students’ mental health, focusing on feeling blue, happiness, and suicidal ideation. Employing a national-level large-scale dataset regarding middle school students in South Korea, we found significant positive effects of...

This paper develops a new methodology to analyze how parents in Rajasthan, India make choices about their daughters’ schooling and marriage. We specify a dynamic discrete choice model in which parents face uncertainty about the quality of their daughter’s future marriage offers. Parents’...