Newsletter
From the ECWG Team
Implementing women’s group programs at scale: Implications for costs and cost-effectiveness
The development community is increasingly recognizing the need to integrate robust implementation research with impact evaluations to apply their lessons to decisions about scaling up pilot interventions. Research also has demonstrated the implications of program scale-up for implementation quality and program impacts. For example, studies have shown that many successful pilot interventions fail to produce similar impacts when scaled up, owing to multiple reasons. The decision to invest in a program, however, is guided by both program effectiveness as well as the cost of producing those effects, making it imperative to understand the implications of program scale for costs. This webinar focused on two studies that demonstrate costs of scaled-up livelihoods and health interventions, delivered through women’s group programming. The session specifically explored economies of scale and cost-effectiveness of a Self-Help Group program in India, and the scale-up costs and outcomes of a participatory learning and action cycle with women's groups across multiple countries.
Women’s Groups and COVID-19: An Evidence Review on Savings Groups in Africa
This paper presents emerging evidence from studies in diverse contexts in sub-Saharan Africa —with a deep dive into Nigeria and Uganda—on how COVID-19 has affected women’s groups and how these groups have helped mitigate the gendered effects of the pandemic’s and the associated policy responses’ consequences up until April 2021. The synthesis presents evidence that savings groups found ways to continue operating, provided leadership opportunities for women during the pandemic, and mitigated some of the negative economic consequences of COVID-19 on individual savings group members. Savings, credit, and group support from other members all likely contributed to the ability of groups to positively affect women’s group member’s resilience during COVID-19. However, savings groups themselves often faced financial challenges because of decreased savings, which sometimes resulted in the depletion of group assets. These findings are consistent with a recent evidence synthesis on how past covariate shocks affected women’s groups and their members. We conclude the paper by presenting various policy recommendations to enable savings groups to achieve improvements in women’s empowerment and economic outcomes and research recommendations to address some of the current evidence-gaps on how COVID-19 is affecting women’s groups and their members.
Implementing women’s group programs at scale: Implications for costs and cost-effectiveness
At the 'What Works Global Summit 2021: Evidence for Development' ECWG organized a panel on women’s groups. The panel included presentations about the impact of 1) women’s groups in Uganda, 2) the impact of adolescent girls’ groups, 3) the impact of integrated economic and health interventions, and 4) evidence from past shocks on women’s group activities and the extent to which women’s groups mitigate the effects of shocks on members and communities.
Watch the recording here
Read the blog
Spillovers of Community-Based Health Interventions on Consumption Smoothing
The development community is increasingly recognizing the need to integrate robust implementation research with impact evaluations to apply their lessons to decisions about scaling up pilot interventions. Research also has demonstrated the implications of program scale-up for implementation quality and program impacts. For example, studies have shown that many successful pilot interventions fail to produce similar impacts when scaled up, owing to multiple reasons. The decision to invest in a program, however, is guided by both program effectiveness as well as the cost of producing those effects, making it imperative to understand the implications of program scale for costs. This webinar focused on two studies that demonstrate costs of scaled-up livelihoods and health interventions, delivered through women’s group programming. The session specifically explored economies of scale and cost-effectiveness of a Self-Help Group program in India, and the scale-up costs and outcomes of a participatory learning and action cycle with women's groups across multiple countries.
©Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/Prashant Panjiar
From our partners
Charting a Pathway to Scale Through Government: Adapting a Girls’ Empowerment Program to a Public School Setting
Though women and girls face many gender-related challenges in countries around the world, these issues – from gender-based violence to unplanned pregnancies and child marriage – are often particularly acute in emerging economies. In response, many development organizations have utilized group-based programs to work against common risk factors and empower adolescent girls and young women – goals that have only become more important in light of COVID-19’s impact on this population. BRAC’s Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) program has been implemented in several countries and rigorously evaluated in Uganda, Sierra Leone and South Sudan. These evaluations revealed that the presence of ELA clubs in villages can lead to decreases in teen pregnancy and increases in the likelihood of engaging in income-generating activities for participants. In cases where ELA was implemented during a crisis, including Ebola in Sierra Leone and civil war in South Sudan, the presence of the clubs helped offset many of the negative impacts of these crises among girls.
Enabling women’s economic empowerment through collective enterprises in rural India
This brief provides an overview of 3ie's Swashakt programme, which supports the implementation and evaluation of nine projects to set up and strengthen enterprises of women's empowerment collectives in nine Indian states. 3ie is funding the implementation of four pilot and five at-scale projects across nine Indian states that support collectives and group-based models for women-led businesses. These include non-farm and service enterprises operating in partnership with the government.
Virtual Roundtable: Promoting Women's Entrepreneurship through Savings Groups
The SEEP Network and the Savings Learning Lab had an interactive discussion on promoting and supporting women’s entrepreneurship through Savings Groups. Expert panelists shared insights from seven countries, featuring topics from financial literacy and business training to promoting climate smart agriculture to addressing harmful gender norms, and more.
©Gates Archive/Saumya Khandelwal
Recent research on women’s groups
Effectiveness of participatory women’s groups scaled up by the public health system to improve birth outcomes in Jharkhand, eastern India: a pragmatic cluster non-randomised controlled trial
The WHO recommends community mobilisation with women’s groups practising participatory learning and action (PLA) to improve neonatal survival in high-mortality settings. This intervention has not been evaluated at scale with government frontline workers. The authors conducted a pragmatic cluster non-randomised controlled trial of women’s groups practising PLA scaled up by government front-line workers in Jharkhand, eastern India. Groups prioritised maternal and newborn health problems, identified strategies to address them, implemented the strategies and evaluated progress. Participatory women’s groups scaled up by the Indian public health system reduced neonatal mortality equitably in a largely rural state and were highly cost-effective, warranting scale-up in other high-mortality rural settings.
Delving into the Determinants of Default Risk in Savings Groups: Empirical Evidence from Ecuador
Financial inclusion has been broadly recognized as critical in alleviating poverty and achieving inclusive economic growth. The capability of borrowers to repay their microcredit loans is a critical concern and is the first risk of Microfinance institutions sustainability. Exploring the determinants of credit risk is an issue of substantial importance in microfinance. The purpose of this research was to identify the savings group members’ characteristics that have impact on default risk. We have used a multivariate regression model to identify the factors that affect default behaviour among microcredit borrowers from savings groups. We have analysed a sample of more than different 400 Savings Groups and 7251 active users of the “Saving and Learning” program in Ecuador. Empirical results demonstrated that factors such as seniority, accumulated savings and the number of members in the savings groups are determinant variables of default risk. The significant positive sign on variable “Gender” is consistent with the previous authors that indicate that the probability of having problems in loan repayment is higher for males than for females. The generalizability of our findings should, of course, be interpreted with caution, as they may be idiosyncratic of the sample, period or region. To contrast and contextualize these results, we had in-depth discussions with the Savinco managers and their field agent in Ecuador. There are many contributions. For practitioners, relevant factors that can affect savings groups default rates have been identified. For academics, the rich information provided by the Savinco mobile App could be a starting point for further quantitative research.
Determining the potential of informal savings groups as a model for formal commitment saving devices
Saving behaviour has attracted research attention over the past 20 years. Typically, individual and household saving rates among low-income groups are inadequate. Research suggests that informal savings groups are effective vehicles for encouraging saving among low-income individuals. Yet little is known about the drivers of positive saving behaviour among informal savings groups, which makes it difficult for formal providers to design interventions that promote higher levels of saving. This study aimed to explore both the rational and non-rational drivers of saving behaviour among low-income members of informal savings groups, the attributes of informal savings groups that positively influence their collective saving behaviour, and to identify the valued features of savings groups that encourage the adoption of informal commitment saving device. The study revealed seven characteristics of informal savings groups that potentially serve as interventions to explain non-rational saving behaviour.
Connecting Empowerment: How social network expansion in women’s collectives helps bridge the gender digital divide
Women’s Empowerment Collectives and the Power of Digital: A Research and Learning Agenda (Digital WEE Project) is a 3-year project that aims to identify how digital technology could enhance pathways to women’s empowerment in Women’s Empowerment Collectives (WECs). The project is exploring how WECs could effectively harness digital technologies, including social media, while mitigating the risk of exacerbating existing inequalities. It is being conducted by BBC Media Action with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In late 2019, BBC Media Action conducted qualitative research with six women’s empowerment collectives (WECs) in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to explore the relationship between women’s roles in collectives, the size and characteristics of their social networks, and their level of digital access and use.
Microcredit and savings associations for building rural household resilienceh
Read this case study of selected village development fund and savings groups in Koh Kong and Mondul Kiri, Cambodia. The Village Development Funds and Savings Group (VDFSG) was established in Cambodia as an instrument to enable poor families residing within Community Protected Areas (CPA) and Community Forestry (CF) establish supplementary economic activities to reduce their dependence on forest resources for their livelihood. The two main activities of this initiative are providing loans and encouraging savings among households who choose to become members of the group. This case study was conducted to generate insights on the financial sustainability of selected VDFSGs and to gather information on members’ perceptions of the usefulness of these institutions in coping with household and climate change-related shocks or stresses.
Relative power: Explaining the effects of food and cash transfers on allocative behaviour rural Nepalese households
The authors estimate the effects of antenatal food and cash transfers with women’s groups on household allocative behaviour and explore whether these effects are explained by intergenerational bargaining among women. Interventions were tested in randomised controlled trial in rural Nepal, in a food-insecure context where pregnant women are allocated the least adequate diets. The authors show that households enrolled in a cash transfer intervention allocated pregnant women with 2-3 pp larger shares of multiple foods (versus their mothers-in-law and male household heads) than households in a control group.
News and commentary on Women’s Groups
Greencard Mtaani And Mastercard Foundation Launches ItsUptoUs COVID Awareness Project In Kibera
Sensitisation programs by Greencard Mtaani, in partnership with Mastercard Foundation, aim to help the residents in Kibera and Lang’ata form savings groups and develop financial discipline.
How NRLM is changing women’s livesh
In Bastar, women self-help groups are starting several enterprises, from making incense sticks to ready-to-eat powder and soaps, besides expanding farming activities with the help of loans under the National Rural Livelihood Mission.
Women’s Village Savings Groups Give Somaliland Families New Prospects
Read about women’s rotating savings groups that are being set up in Somaliland’s Awdal region.
Women empowerment, SHGs govt's focus: Madhya Pradesh's minister
The finance minister of Madhya Pradesh highlighted that women empowerment and promotion of self-help groups (SHGs) of women are the main agendas of the state government.
Featured Event
Africa Saccos Week
Date: August 11-November 21, 2021Date: 25 - 27 April 2022
Location: Nairobi , Kenya
Africa Saccos Week is a yearly conference & exhibition dedicated to the development of Savings and Credit Co-Operatives (Saccos ) in Africa. This will be a platform to exchange ideas about the journey of changing African lives through access to finance.