Gender inequality is a persistent issue in India. Girls are less likely to be enrolled in school, especially in secondary and higher education. Parents often prioritize their sons’ education and healthcare over their daughters’. This imbalance reflects deep-rooted gender biases. As we discussed in the previous research paper post, one of the ways policies try to move people towards more desirable behavior, that is, to invest equally in boys and girls, is to pay cash incentives for the desired behavior. There have been many policies in which central or state governments provide direct cash or open a long term bond in the name of the girl if parents fulfill certain conditions such as getting the girl vaccinated, enrolling her in school. There have been papers studying the impact of these policies, including one very influential paper written by me (just kidding, only my advisors and few of my PhD classmates know about the paper). However, the paper we’re discussing today, Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes by Diva Dhar, Tarun Jain, and Seema Jayachandran takes a different approach. Instead of focusing on financial incentives, it aims to change gender attitudes directly.
Gender inequality is a persistent issue in India. Girls are less likely to be enrolled in school, especially in secondary and higher education. Parents often prioritize their sons’ education and healthcare over their daughters’. This imbalance reflects deep-rooted gender biases. As we discussed in the previous research paper post, one of the ways policies try to move people towards more desirable behavior, that is, to invest equally in boys and girls, is to pay cash incentives for the desired behavior. There have been many policies in which central or state governments provide direct cash or open a long term bond in the name of the girl if parents fulfill certain conditions, such as getting the girl vaccinated and enrolling her in school. There have been papers studying the impact of these policies, including one paper written by me. However, the paper we’re discussing today, Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes by Diva Dhar, Tarun Jain, and Seema Jayachandran takes a different approach. Instead of focusing on financial incentives, it aims to change gender attitudes directly.
The central idea of the paper is that it might be possible to directly change people’s gender attitudes by having them participate in sessions where they explicitly learn about gender equality. It might also be more effective to target gender attitudes during adolescence, a time when perceptions are more malleable as compared to adulthood. The authors worked with an external agency which led interactive sessions on gender equality in schools with students aged 13 to 16 (seventh to tenth graders).
These sessions, lasting 45 minutes every three weeks from April 2014 to October 2016, covered topics such as gender stereotypes, roles at home, girls’ education, women’s employment, and harassment. The program combined human rights arguments for gender equality with pragmatic reasons, like the economic benefits of empowering women. One example from the sessions involved students breaking into groups to list whether males or females performed specific chores in their households. When patterns emerged showing women did most of the chores, facilitators asked why this was the case and whether it was fair.
What is the main research question?
The central question is whether explicit sessions discussing gender equality can influence students’ gender attitudes. As we have discussed previously, randomization is our friend when we want to study the impact of any program. This paper also randomizes access to the program, some schools get the program and others don’t. The authors work with a total of 314 government schools in the state of Haryana (my home state). They can later compare the gender attitudes of students in schools which had these sessions to those who did not have them.
How do they measure gender attitudes?
Measuring gender attitudes can be tricky. The authors conduct surveys before and after the program to learn about gender attitudes. These surveys included questions about whether it is wrong for women to work outside the home or if there should be more women in politics. They also ask questions about students’ behavior at home, such as whether and how much they participate in household chores.
What do they find?
In the initial survey, gender attitudes were quite regressive. About 80% of boys and 60% of girls believed that a woman’s most important role was being a good homemaker. However, the program had a positive impact on these attitudes. The authors find a roughly 16% increase in progressive attitudes towards gender equality, with the effect being more pronounced in boys. The boys report participating more in household chores, while also expressing more supportive views about women’s employment and education. The authors also do a follow-up two years after the sessions ended, and find that the impact persisted even after these two years, showing evidence that the sessions actually had a lasting impact on gender beliefs.
Addressing the challenges: Social Desirability Bias
One main challenge here is that a lot of evidence is based on self reported surveys. The authors also highlight this challenge. Since students have been told what the desirable behavior is for so much time, they may just report that behavior in their answers. This is referred to as the potential for social desirability bias—when people give answers they think are expected rather than what they truly believe.
The authors try to tackle this challenge in a unique way. They create a social desirability scale (specifically called Marlowe-Crowne social desirability scale) to identify those who are more likely to give socially desirable answers. The score is created by asking people different questions such as if they have ever been jealous of someone else’s good fortune. The idea is that students saying that they have never been jealous are likely bluffing by giving more socially desirable answers. Such students would get a high social desirable score, while someone openly admitting his jealousy of someone who had a fancier notebook probably doesn’t care much about social desirability, and would get a lower score.
Once the authors have a social desirability score for each student, then they can focus on those who have a lower score, and see if there is any impact for them. Because these students are less likely to care about giving answers which are expected of them, a change in their answers likely reflects impact of these sessions. This is exactly what the authors find, which gives more credibility to their results.
However, I personally think that there is also another effect possibly at play here. These students have been in very interactive class sessions, so they have likely paid more attention than they would in their math/history class. They could potentially see the survey as an exam for this class where they give more “right” answers because they remember what they learned in class more. But still, the fact that the program effect stays even two years after the sessions have ended, also helps with the concern that students are reporting something while believing something else. There are many other tests also that the authors perform to validate the results, which we won’t be going into in this post for brevity. For those interested in a deeper dive, I highly recommend reading the full paper.
Another good thing is that the authors can potentially also follow these students over time, and test impact on their behavior in their adulthood. They can study the level of college education the girls end up receiving, their employment status, and also for boys, whether their wives are more likely to work outside home or not, as a result of them receiving sessions on gender equality.
Conclusion
To conclude, this study offers a hopeful message: changing deep-seated gender attitudes is possible, especially if we start young. So, the next time you hear someone say, “Kids these days…”, remember that with the right guidance, “kids these days” might just be the ones to lead us to a more equal future.