Psychological constraints

Psychological constraints, women empowerment, and development

There is growing recognition of the importance of women’s empowerment in its own right and for a range of development outcomes. However, the evidence base on what works to improve women’s empowerment is thin. While much of the existing research has focused on relaxing external economic constraints, such as lack of credit and education, recent empirical evidence in economics indicates the existence of internal constraints, which can take the form of beliefs, internalized psychological barriers and culturally-imposed constraints. Our research aims to understand how internal constraints limit women’s empowerment, and how relaxing these constraints can spur development.

Currently, we have two ongoing projects on women’s empowerment:

1) Empowering women by external economic and internal psychological-based barriers: Theory and empirical evidence from a microfinance intervention in Vietnam

2) Improving food and nutrition security by enhancing women's empowerment in Bangladesh and Ethiopia

Updates

September 2022: Blog "Beyond external economic barriers: understanding women empowerment in the local context"
August 2022: Working paper "Belief-based poverty traps and the effects of material and psychological development interventions"
June 2022: Project update "Members from the University of Groningen (UG) visit Vietnam to meet project partners and better understand local contexts"

Contact persons

Robert Lensink
Project leader

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Mark Treurniet
Vietnam project

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Kritika Saxena
Bangladesh and Ethiopia project

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