Working Paper

What works to enhance women’s agency

Abstract

Women’s agency—their ability to define and act on goals, make decisions that matter to them, and participate in the economy and public life (Donald et al. 2017; Kabeer 1999; Laszlo et al. 2017)—is limited in many contexts around the world. J-PAL’s literature review, “What works to enhance women’s agency,” draws from 160 randomized and natural experiments in low and middle-income countries to distill key lessons on what we know about supporting women’s agency based on quantitative evidence. This review takes a cross-cutting approach to analyzing evidence across different domains  of women’s agency and focuses on understanding the mechanisms through which interventions achieve their impacts.