Temporary Acceleration or Long-Term Change? Experimental Evidence on Female Empowerment and Intimate Partner Violence in Urban Liberia
中文摘要
本文评估了利比里亚城市地区一项包含多方面内容的女性赋权项目，该项目在12个月内将强化心理社会治疗与职业技能培训相结合。评估采用随机对照试验，并在项目结束后1年和3.5年（即入组后2年和4.5年）开展追踪调查。在首次终期调查时，处理组女性遭受情感暴力及身体／性暴力形式的亲密伴侣暴力（IPV）的情况大幅减少，她们对社区规范支持IPV的感知程度也大幅下降；未发现对心理福祉的影响。到项目结束后3.5年时，处理组的IPV水平仍接近首次终期调查时的水平，但处理组与对照组之间的差异已经消失，因为对照组的IPV水平也大幅下降。只有对社区规范的感知方面的组间差距仍然存在。定性证据表明，心理社会干预部分是主要起作用的要素，而经济干预部分则因承诺的资本补助未能发放而在实施上受损。我们认为，这种较长期的趋同反映出处理组女性在个体和人际层面发生了持久变化，同时也需要结合研究地区同期实施的结构性干预这一背景来理解；这些干预可能尤其影响了对照组。
Abstract
This paper evaluates a multifaceted female empowerment program in urban Liberia that combined intensive psychosocial therapy with vocational skills training over 12 months. The evaluation uses a randomized controlled trial with follow-up surveys at 1 year and 3.5 years post-program (2 and 4.5 years after enrollment). At the first endline, treatment women experienced large reductions in emotional and physical/sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) and in perceived community norms supporting IPV; effects on psychological well-being were null. By 3.5 years, the treatment group’s IPV levels remained close to their first-endline values, but the treatment–control difference had closed because the control group also experienced substantial reductions. Only the gap in perceived community norms persisted. Qualitative evidence points to the psychosocial component as the primary active ingredient, while the economic arm was operationally compromised by the non-delivery of promised capital grants. We interpret the longer-term convergence as durable individual- and interpersonal-level change for treatment women, set against contemporaneous structural interventions in the study region that plausibly affected the control group in particular.