1. What’s the gender lab?

2. Figure out what works and what does not to improve gender equality and use it to shape policy

3. Status and structure
More than 50 active projects in 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
Five thematic areas centered around economic activity: agriculture, property rights, youth employment, enterprises, violence against women (small)
Structure
Core analytical team (leads the evaluation activities)
Partnerships with outside academics – but as equals
Active partnerships with operational/implementation teams on both the design of impact evaluations and the use of the results
They help shape the set of questions to ask (design)
They are more respected by their operational peers in sharing the results (use)

4. Evolution
v. 1.0
Work opportunistically, fair amount of convincing needed
v. 2.0
Organize around thematic areas
More demand for our help (e.g. call for projects, increasing number of people calling us for help – on both ops & impact evaluations)
More scope to innovate within projects…try new and out of the box interventions
V 3.0
Organized around a set of key questions identified in “white papers” (what do we know, what do we need to know) within thematic areas
Even more involvement in design (and implementation)
Strategic approach to getting results used (prioritization, new modalities)

5. How we get projects Two ways
Call for projects interested in getting an impact evaluation
We will do an impact evaluation of your intervention
Work with anyone – WB projects, but also governments direct, firms, NGOs
Top-up money (small) available for innovations (e.g. bringing in a specific kind of technical support to try something new)
Opportunistically
Early on: active seeking out of projects and convincing them
Now: we have more of a reputation and people come to us (3 types – validators, innovators, and looking for innovations)

6. 1. Understanding the underlying constraints
Example: occupational segregation
Big part of gender earnings gaps come from differences in sector/occupational choice
Two studies – Uganda and Ethiopia to understand who are the women who break through to male dominated trades
When they do, they make the same
Mentorship, information key
Results lead to pilot interventions in the Republic of Congo, Guinea. Under discussion in Kenya and Turkey.
Working with partners to increase female participation in non-traditional trades e.g. tech sector, heavy machinery

7. 2. Synthesis Example: Leveling the Field & Costing the Gender Gap
Leveling the Field (joint with ONE & LSMS-ISA): looked at the gap in productivity between male and female farmers and the main factors contributing to the gap in 6 countries
The cost of the gender gap in agriculture (joint with UN Women, UNEP, UNDP): looked at how much the gap meant in terms of GDP, poverty reduction in 3 countries.
High international visibility – WEF (Africa), CADP, press, etc.
National events for dialogue (e.g. Malawi, Uganda)
Refocus the discussion on the constraints to female producers, and raise the issue of labor (next generation work now being developed with agriculture team)

8. 3. Innovation Example: Business training that really works
2014: Review of rigorous evidence: no evidence that business training programs really move profits
Is it the wrong skills? Wrong people? Or do skills not matter?
Innovation: business training that draws on psychology and focuses on mindset (e.g. how to be proactive) than practices (e.g. how to keep accounts).
Evaluation: Togo – compared a standard (World Bank designed) business training vs. Personal Initiative Training
Results: for women PI training = 40% higher profits.
Taking the results to other places: Mexico, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Mozambique (farmers). And within the World Bank, some re-thinking on what we offer.

9. 4. Advising specific programs
Example: Land registration in Rwanda
Rigorous evaluation of a pilot version of the program showed:
Big increases in investment, 10% for men, 18% for women
Increase in women’s ownership rights within households..
But women who were not formally married (~30%) were losing rights
Pilot results shared with government. Program goes national with changes to operating rules. Now all women are benefiting equally.
On demand project support – ranging from a one-off briefing to full participation in project design and implementer connections

10. 5. Informing national policy dialogues
Example: Nigeria
National 4 city dialogue, with workshops to identify actionable priorities
Priorities fed back to the Ministry of Finance
Also opened up space for different interventions with the World Bank country team projects
Leveling the Field work lead to agricultural policy gender dialogue in Abuja chaired by Ministers of Finance and Agriculture
Ultimate outcome was a first generation agro-processing experiment with the Ministry of Agriculture
Also worked with GWIN – former government’s flagship program on extra funds for ministries that execute additional activities on gender

11. 6. Taking what works to scale
Example: programs for adolescent girls
Multiple impact evaluations complete and underway to look at the impacts of adolescent girls programs in multiple dimensions.
Liberia
47% increase in employment among trainees
80% increase in average weekly income
Significant increase in frequency and amount of young women’s savings
Uganda
Increase in girls’ earnings and spending on themselves
26% less likely to have a child
Sex against their will drops by 76%
Results go to scale: to date over $200m in operations, reaching 100,000 girls in 8 countries, including India

12. Recap: Ways the Lab works
Understanding the underlying constraints
Synthesis
Innovation
Informing national policy dialogues
Taking what works to scale

13. The overall approach Rigorous evidence
More than inform policy: research uptake = scaling up what works and scaling back or changing what does not
Concrete policy advice to support moving from advocacy to action
Partnerships –government agencies, operations teams within the World Bank, NGO staff, donor staff in other agencies (e.g. USAID, MCC), private companies, and academics (global)
Leverage: relatively small investment in building knowledge pays off in policy and project changes – in Africa GIL so far $1 directly shifts $46 in development spending plus: policy changes, more $ for projects, scaling down ineffective projects, innovation with firms

14. More on the web: http://www. worldbank