Akanksha Vardani
Formal property ownership may not empower women unless those that they interact with also recognize it. I study the effect of improving awareness about property rights on women’s empowerment through a field experiment in rural Maharashtra. I work in a setting where following a recent policy change married women are documented owners but only 26% recognize it. I randomize an awareness campaign across 1,783 households that informs both spouses that women co-own their property and delivers a physical copy of their ownership document. The campaign improves knowledge that women hold property rights, increases expenditure on women-specific goods by 40%, and reduces men’s alcohol consumption by 33%, though it has no overall effect on domestic violence. I develop and test an intrahousehold bargaining model, which highlights that the effect of the campaign may differ depending on who already knows. Consistent with the model’s predictions, the strongest consumption effects are observed in households with the lowest initial knowledge about women’s ownership, while reductions in domestic violence occur in households where the husband did not know but the wife did. This study highlights how shifting beliefs about women’s rights is essential to realizing the full impact of large-scale government programs.
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