Women’s Action Committees and Local Services

How can women be better mobilized to participate in consultative processes that would likely improve public services provision?

The Women’s Action Committees and Local Services Metaketa round seeks to answer this question by coordinating five research projects in diverse contexts that assess how the act of participation affects women in these settings and how the quality of participation can also be improved. All of the projects use common interventions that include a placebo treatment, a treatment arm increasing collective efficacy of women-only action committees, and an additive treatment arm that adds high quality training participation skills to advocate for issues of concern to group members. The project is conducted in Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

ISDC is a partner with Humboldt University Berlin, Peking University, Evidence Central Asia, and Development Policy Institute to implement this project in Kyrgyzstan. The project will work with the village health committees as key anchors for implementation of the intervention part. The active phase of the project has started mid-2022 and is planned to be completed by Fall 2023.