Promoting Female Empowerment at the Household Level With Family Planning Use, Financial Literacy and Gender Socialization Education Among Couples in Ibadan, Nigeria

Background: Despite the growing influences of modernization and westernization, most Nigerian subcultures remain largely traditional. Household division of labor continues to follow traditional gendered roles with the male partner being the breadwinner and decision-maker, while women are ascribed tasks such as childcare and homemaking. These traditional roles often disempower the woman such that she has no say regarding how household funds will be spent and inhibit her from making important household decisions such as whether or when she or her children will receive preventive, curative or rehabilitative healthcare. Moreover, in Nigeria, both the customary law and the major religions stipulate that a woman should be submissive to her husband. The sociocultural and religious contexts appear to be in a conspiracy against women, and favor men who are encouraged to "be in control" of their homes. In some cases, this translates to the controlling husband preventing his wife from working outside the home, making it difficult for her to become economically independent and own assets. Such women, and those who lack the education and/or skills to join the labor force are further disempowered in the sense that they are unable to contribute to the family income, a quality known to improve women's status and decision-making autonomy. Women who do not work for cash or kind often find themselves fully dependent on their husbands for both economic and social identity, predisposing them to intimate partner violence, IPV. This lack of decision-making autonomy penetrates all spheres of women's lives, including reproduction, such that many women are unable, on their own, to choose to use modern contraception to space or limit births, without their husbands' permission.

Study goal and design: The goal of this study is to generate rigorous evidence on how to empower women individually and in households, by targeting both partners in a couple, with a multi-sectoral approach that affects three critical domains of female empowerment - creating more equitable spousal relationships, expanding reproductive choice, and increasing economic empowerment, and is potentially sustainable and can be scaled-up. By influencing these three domains of female empowerment, while simultaneously involving male partners, the intervention aims to set into motion a set of processes that will generate equitable and supportive gender relationships at the household level.

To rigorously evaluate the intervention, a cluster randomized control design was chosen. The primary goal of the evaluation is to test the impact of the gender socialization arm, the key intervention, and the added improvements in female empowerment and spousal supportiveness measures that may be seen with the incorporation of financial literacy and family planning interventions. The trial consists of 4 arms: Arm 1 - couples participate in a structured group education program on gender socialization; Arm 2 - couples participate in a structured financial literacy education program, in addition; Arm 3 - couples receive the complete package of interventions (gender socialization education, financial literacy and family planning counseling and services, with vouchers for the poorest women); Arm 4 - control group.

Study hypotheses: Couples receiving the complete package of interventions will have stronger female empowerment outcomes as reflected through measures of spousal supportiveness and equitable gender relationships in households as compared to couples receiving fewer components of the intervention, or no intervention. In addition, couples that receive only the gender socialization intervention or a combination of interventions will have stronger female empowerment outcomes as compared to couples in the control group.

Study area: The study is taking place in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, Nigeria. As part of the 2006 population census, the Nigerian National Population Commission prepared a list of 665,000 EAs that has served as a sampling frame for many national and subnational surveys, where a census enumeration area is defined as a cluster and is the primary sampling unit. Enumeration areas consist of approximately 211 inhabitants or 48 households. Enumeration areas form localities, localities form Local Government Areas (LGAs), and LGAs form states. The LGA is a large enough area, where multiple intervention arms can be implemented while avoiding contamination, but at the same time couples residing in an LGA are more likely to be similar as compared to couples living elsewhere. The research team worked in two urban (Ibadan North and Ibadan Southwest) and two peri-urban (Akinyele and Oluyole) LGAs.