The Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola : Lessons from an Empowerment Program
The authors evaluate an intervention to raise young women’s economic empowerment in Sierra Leone, where women frequently experience sexual violence and face multiple economic disadvantages. The intervention provides them with a protective space (a...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/149651548746681379/The-Economic-Lives-of-Young-Women-in-the-Time-of-Ebola-Lessons-from-an-Empowerment-Program http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31219 |
| Summary: | The authors evaluate an intervention to
raise young women’s economic empowerment in Sierra Leone,
where women frequently experience sexual violence and face
multiple economic disadvantages. The intervention provides
them with a protective space (a club) where they can find
support, receive information on health or reproductive
issues and vocational training. Unexpectedly, the
post-baseline period coincided with the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
Our analysis documents the impact of the Ebola outbreak on
the economic lives of 4,700 women tracked over the crisis,
and any ameliorating role played by the intervention. In
highly disrupted control villages, the crisis leads younger
girls to spend significantly more time with men,
out-of-wedlock pregnancies rise, and as a result, they
experience a persistent 16pp drop in school enrolment
post-crisis. These adverse effects are almost entirely
reversed in treated villages because the intervention
enables young girls to allocate time away from men,
preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies and enabling them to
re-enroll in school post-crisis. In treated villages, the
unavailability of young women leads some older girls to use
transactional sex as a coping strategy. The intervention
causes them to increase contraceptive use so this does not
translate into higher fertility. |
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