In India, J-PAL South Asia is working with the state governments of Punjab and Odisha to scale up an evidence-based gender transformative education programme in government schools with Breakthrough, a non-governmental organisation, reaching 4 million students across both states by 2026.
Women and girls around the world experience pervasive gender inequality and gender-based discrimination. In many places, including India, social norms contribute to gender gaps that severely limit women’s educational, professional, economic and personal growth.
From 2013 to 2017, researchers, led by J-PAL affiliate and gender sector chair Seema Jayachandran (from Princeton University), partnered with Breakthrough and the state government of Haryana to measure the impact of a school-based gender equality curriculum on adolescents’ gender attitudes, aspirations and behaviors.
They found that a series of interactive classroom discussions led to more gender-progressive attitudes and gender-equitable behaviors among adolescent students.
Based on these findings, Breakthrough and J-PAL South Asia partnered with governments in the Indian states of Punjab and Odisha to adopt the programme at scale. The curriculum was rolled out to sixth through eighth graders in all 6,250 state-run schools in Punjab in July 2022, and rollout is anticipated for sixth through tenth graders in 23,000 state-run schools in Odisha in 2024.
The scale-up is supported by Community Jameel and Co-Impact through the Evidence to Policy grant.