







There are many reasons as to why girls are not able to attend school. First, there are restrictions imposed on the movement of women and the access they have to the outside world; often “cultural considerations” are invoked in justifying such restrictions. Another important factor is the actual access to a secondary school. In a developing country like India, high schools are fewer and a larger distance away in comparison to those in an average developed country. This coupled with the fact that it is not often safe for women to travel unaccompanied for long distances deters otherwise willing parents from sending their daughters to school.

Social norms take time to change and it is difficult to directly influence the first of the reasons. However, the second factor can be effectively tackled by concerted policy. The direct way to improve school enrollment would be to set up more schools so that girls do not have to go very far from home. This coupled with efforts to improve the rule of law would encourage reluctant parents to send their daughters to school. There are several infrastructural hurdles, however, to such schemes. Therefore an initiative like the cycle programme removes some of the bottlenecks for girls’ enrollment in secondary school quickly without requiring any additional investment in infrastructure.

This project aimed to investigate how empowerment of girls through this programme may improve earnings and living conditions via the influence on aspirations as they filter into the society at the local level. We wanted to investigate under what conditions better opportunities may lead to more gender equality.  What are the long-term effects of conditional reforms to stimulate higher participation in educational programmes? Can such reforms help the local community to escape aspiration induced poverty traps with a clear gender bias?


Specifically, we studied the following long term impacts of a one-time in-kind transfer on women’s empowerment:

  • Were the targeted girls more likely to proceed to college and later on to work?
  • Did aspirations of parents for their daughters change? Was the dowry lower or higher for more educated girls if they were matched with more educated boys?
  • As social norms (slowly) change when girls step out of the house to study or to work, do they encounter less harassment and violence?




Project information



Start date / End date

1 April 2015 - 27 January 2017


India - Bihar

Research Theme