Promoting Female Empowerment at the Household Level Among Couples in Ibadan, Nigeria

Sub-Saharan African women continue to face socio-economic challenges and limited reproductive freedoms, which diminishes their ability to exercise agency and choice in their lives and their environment. The goal of this study is to generate rigorous scientific evidence on empowering women individually and in households through a cluster randomized control trial. The trial will test the efficacy of a multi-sectoral program targeting three critical domains of female empowerment through gender socialization education, counseling and improved access to family planning, financial literacy among couples in Ibadan, Nigeria. The innovation in this approach is the focus on creating a supportive intra-familial environment to accelerate progress towards female empowerment, not just with the multi-sectoral intervention, but also by targeting both partners of couples, individually and together. It is hoped that there will be a shift of broader community norms by building the capacity of study couples to transfer their newly acquired knowledge and skills to other couples in their community, thereby creating a ripple of change.