EGAP Metaketa V: Women’s Action Committees and Local Services in Pakistan

The EGAP Metaketa V: Women’s Action Committees and Local Services project conducts a field experiment on developing women’s collective efficacy for local political participation in Pakistan. The study is being conducted as part of a set of five coordinated field experiments across Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Vietnam through the EGAP Metaketa V initiative. The common treatment implemented across all countries involves a set of facilitated trainings delivered to women’s groups aimed to increase their gender-based collective efficacy.

The Pakistan arm of the project aims to study the effect of training delivered to women aimed at removing psycho-social barriers to political participation. The project will study whether such training improves women’s political participation outcomes.

The research will be conducted through a randomised control trial (RCT) in 90 Union Councils (UCs) in Lahore, Pakistan. The research team is working with the implementing partner Aurat Foundation. The project will set up Women Action Committees (WAC) in 180 localities in Lahore, comprising 15-20 each. These WACs will be divided into treatment and control groups. 90 WACs in the control group will receive 1 training, while 90 WACs in the treatment group will receive a series of 6 training sessions. The team will then study the difference in political participation between the two groups. The field activities in this project will involve the following:

• Setting up 180 Women’s Action Committees (WACs) in Lahore.
• Conducting baseline and Endline surveys with around 3000 women and 360 political workers.
• Conducting participant observations, interviews and focus group discussions in 45 treatment and control localities
• Implementing a competitive community grants program where citizens will be able to apply for small grants to fund community development projects.