Measuring Girls' Empowerment in India: the SHEF Girls' Education and Empowerment Program in Public Girls' Schools

A SIPA team worked with the Study Hall Educational Foundation (SHEF), an Indian based non-profit organization focused on access to quality education, to conduct an initial evaluation of SHEF’s Girls’ Empowerment Program operating in 100 government schools for girls from lower socioeconomic levels. The team developed a quantitative survey tool and Empowerment Readiness Index to measure the degree of empowerment readiness of adolescent girls. The SIPA team found that the greatest difference between students in schools that scored higher and lower on the empowerment index were in attitudes toward existing gender norms in society and their participation in resolving real-life gender-based issues among their families/communities.