Enhancing Female Participation in Communal Voluntary Contribution Project Choice Through Women’s Action Committees in Vietnam

Background

With women’s political participation low around the world (Iversen and Rosenbluth 2008), this Metaketa round assesses the potential impact of collective efficacy training in increasing the quality and quantity of women’s participation in local budget decisions. It also assesses whether increased quality and quantity of participation generated through collective efficacy also increases the responsiveness of local officials to women’s policy priorities. The logic in testing the impact of collective efficacy builds on the finding that information alone does not bridge the participation gap (Gottlieb 2016, Buntaine, Daniels and Devlin 2018). Information must be combined with the motivation and confidence (both individual and collective) to make policy change. An additional relevant question also assessed in this project is what motivates group membership in a hybrid context. The collective efficacy framework examined in this project is predicated on the idea that women are willing to join groups administered by a mass organization. While there is some research on willingness to join groups in hybrid regimes (Reuter 2022, Handlin 2016, Palmer-Rubin, Garay and Poertner 2021), little experimental research examines the determinants of willingness to join a mass organization such as the Women’s Union in Vietnam. To that end, this project will also include an alternative arm during the burn-in meeting to assess the impact of different incentives on the willingness to join the research program.

Intervention Date: November 2022 – March 2023

Research Design

Our experimental design aims to assess the impact of collective efficacy on the outcomes of interest by randomly assigning villages in two districts in two provinces in north and south Vietnam to a collective efficacy and information training program administered by Oxfam Vietnam (see below for a detailed description of GALS). Our project will have a simple two group design where 90 villages receive the GALS training and 90 villages do not receive the training (see Table 2). The study units will be groups of 20 women across 180 villages. Those 180 village will be spread through two districts in Thai Nguyen province in northern Vietnam.

Hypotheses

• H1 (Level of Participation): Collective efficacy training increases quantity participation in local budget issues (measured in elite and women’s endline surveys and behaviorally in the grants program).
• H2 (Quality of Participation): Collective efficacy training increases quality of participation in local budget issues (measured in elite and women’s endline surveys and behaviorally in the grants program)
• H3 (Responsiveness): Collective efficacy training increases local elites’ responsiveness to women’s needs and participation in local budget issues (measured in elite and women’s endline surveys and behaviorally in the grants program).
• H4 (Perceived Injustice): Collective efficacy training increases level of perceived injustice towards women (measured in the endline women’s survey)
• H5 (Group Identity): Collective efficacy training increase the salience of group identity (both as WAC members and as women as measured in the endline women’s survey)
• H6 (Network size): Collective efficacy training increase the size of a woman’s network (measured in the endline women’s survey)
• H7 (Policy coordination): Collective efficacy training increase the coordination of WAC group members interests (measured in the endline women’s survey)
• H8 (Informedness): Collective efficacy training increase level of women’s informedness (measured in the endline women’s survey)
• H9 (Group efficacy): Collective efficacy training increases the level of the women’s perceived efficacy within the group.
• The following are the predicted heterogeneous effects:
  • H A.1: Where village temples do not exist (or were removed), the strength of the Women’s Union should be greater
  • H A.2: Where village temples do not exist (or were removed), women’s participation and voting rates should be lower
  • H A.3: Where village temples do not exist (or were removed), the effect of the training program on the quality and quantity of participation as well as responsiveness should be higher
  • H B.1: In villages with more party members/women’s union members, the effect of the training program on the quality and quantity of participation as well as responsiveness should be higher
  • H B.2: The effect of the training program on the quality and quantity of participation as well as responsiveness should be higher for party members and women’s union members than non-party members and non-women’s union members.
  • H C.1: In villages with a high percentage of ethnic minority groups, the effect of the training program on the quality and quantity of participation as well as responsiveness should be higher.
  • H C.2: The effect of the training program on the quality and quantity of participation as well as responsiveness should be higher for ethnic individuals than for Kinh people.
  • H C.3: In villages with a high percentage of ethnic minority groups, the effect of the training program on the quality and quantity of participation as well as responsiveness should be lower.
  • H C.4: The effect of the training program on the quality and quantity of participation as well as responsiveness should be lower for ethnic individuals than for Kinh people. We also expect the training program to impact these Vietnam-specific outcomes:
  • H D.1: Women participating in collective efficacy training will not change their level of bias against women holding national executive positions and legislative positions
  • H D.2: Women participating in collective efficacy training will express lower bias against women holding commune and village leadership positions than women not participating in the program.
  • H E.1: Women participating in collective efficacy training will express lower confidence in village and commune officials than women not participating in the training.
  • H E.2: Women participating in collective efficacy training will express no difference in confidence in district, province, and national levels of government than women not participating in the training.
  • H E 3: Women participating in collective efficacy training express higher confidence in the Women’s Union than women not participating in the training. The following are the predictions from the alternative treatment arm of the project, where we vary the scripts used for the recruitment meetings.
  • H G.1: The selective benefits alternative arm will increase the overall number that sign up.
  • H G.2: The civic duty alternative arm will increase the number of preexisting group members joining the training relative to the other two groups.
  • H G.3: The selective goods alternative arm will increase the number of new group members joining the training relative to the other two groups.
  • H G.4: Lower income respondents will be more likely to respond to the selective incentives treatment than higher income.
  • H G.5: Party member and VWU respondents will be more likely to respond to the civic duty treatment than non-party member/non VWU respondents.

Findings