Reshaping adolescents' gender attitudes: evidence from a school based experiment in India

A randomised controlled trial in Haryana, India found that adolescents whose schools ran Breakthrough's Taaron ki Toli programme shifted towards more gender equitable attitudes.

This academic paper presents peer reviewed results from a randomised controlled trial in Haryana, India. The organisation Breakthrough ran the school programme with the state government. Adolescents in grades 7 to 9 took part in classroom discussions on gender equality, roughly every three weeks, for two and a half years. Topics included stereotypes, roles at home, girls' education, women's employment, and harassment, alongside communication skills.

The study followed around 14,000 students through two later survey waves. It found the programme made attitudes more supportive of gender equality (by 0.18 standard deviations). That's equivalent to converting 16 per cent of regressive views into support for equality. Self-reported behaviour also improved, particularly among boys. Girls' aspirations, already high before the programme, didn't change much.

A second follow-up survey ran approximately two years after the programme ended. It found the effect on attitudes hadn't faded. Some behavioural effects had grown, alongside a small rise in girls applying for a college scholarship. This suggests the changes persist well beyond the programme itself.

Key messages

• A two and a half year school based discussion programme made adolescents' gender attitudes 0.18 standard deviations more equitable, equivalent to converting around 16 per cent of regressive views into supportive ones. Self-reported gender equitable behaviour also improved, with a larger effect among boys than girls.
• The attitude change persisted, essentially undiminished, when researchers returned two to two and a half years after the programme had ended.
• The programme had its strongest effects on attitudes to women's employment and gender roles, and its weakest effect on fertility related attitudes. Girls' educational and career aspirations were already high before the programme and did not rise significantly as a result of it. The intervention also raised girls' self-esteem and modestly increased their applications for a college scholarship in the longer term follow up.

This resource is from Breakthrough, an organisation working to make violence against women and girls unacceptable, using media, community mobilisation and school based programmes to shift gender norms across India.