Promoting gender equality and changing social norms through youth engagement in Benin

Restrictive gender norms have a significant impact on women's lives, limiting their autonomy, human capital (Baird et al., 2019, Creanga et al, 2011), health (Dhar et al, 2022), and income-generating activities (Jayachandran, 2021). In Benin, where approximately 5 million women reside (World Bank, 2015), girls are expected to focus on domestic responsibilities from a young age, leading to lower educational attainment and restricted decision-making power (Séne, 2010; DHS 2018).

Child marriage and violence are prevalent: over 30% of women aged 20-49 are married before 18, and the same number experience domestic violence (UNICEF, 2017). Women also have limited control over healthcare decisions, as 46% of married women report that their husbands make these decisions alone (INSAE, 2017).

To overcome the challenges, effective interventions targeting gender norms could empower women and improve their health outcomes.

Plan International's Champions of Change (CoC) program gives teenagers (girls and boys aged 13-17) tools to help them advocate for gender equality and change norms in their communities. The boys and girls volunteering to be actors for change do 60 hours of training with the program instructors. Training covers assertiveness and self-confidence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, sexuality, and gender equality.

The assessment aims to measure the program's impact by comparing several ways the teenagers who will do the training are chosen, according to whether they are more progressive or conservative, to define which works best. The girls and boys are trained in single-sex groups with customized content, led by a facilitator of the same sex. Community outreach activities are organized after the training to reach peers, families and leaders.

To achieve this, the assessment is carried out in 240 villages with working groups split into several categories:

• Young people who volunteer.
• Volunteers, plus young people who initially had more "traditional" opinions about girls' and boys' roles.
• Young people who are very "connected", and influential in social media, who are likely to post ideas more easily for those around them.
• Young people identified as having more traditional opinions at the start.

In the short and medium term, the research team expects that the CoC program will improve the trained teenagers' knowledge, attitudes and behavior related to gender equality, as well as self-confidence, aspirations and the ability to act. The intervention also aims to strengthen discussion around these topics with peers and adults (parents, tutors, leaders), and encourage actions young people take in communities.

The assessment will be key in estimating the program's causal impact and ascertaining which targeting strategy maximizes consequences, by identifying direct impact on beneficiaries and impact on teenagers who did not take part (especially friends and other peers). The results will steer improvement in how Champions of Change is implemented and make design of programs transforming social norms in rural settings clearer.