The Impact of Pre-marital Counseling on Women's Empowerment and Couples' Wellbeing: A Field Experiment in Indonesia

A key challenge in the developing world is raising female labor force participation (FLFP), as many women drop out of the labor force upon marriage or childbirth. A parallel challenge, increasingly clear through new literature demonstrating backlash by husbands from their wives’ employment, is raising FLFP without reducing the perceived well-being of the husband and, in turn, the wife or family.

This project explores the role of marital counseling in addressing these two objectives together. Couples counseling promotes dialogue and respect between partners, potentially generating greater voice for women and a more equitable distribution of responsibilities in the household while improving both husbands’ and wives’ wellbeing.  In this project, researchers will partner with Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs to evaluate a pre-marital counseling program designed and delivered by the government. They will randomly allocate slots in the program and evaluate effects on women’s employment, household decision-making, gender attitudes, spousal wellbeing, reproductive health, and fertility.

In a recent pilot evaluation, the researchers found that four months after the two-day counseling session, treated couples exhibited 11 percent (p=0.098) higher female employment (or a 56 percent reduction in female unemployment), significantly more progressive beliefs about and performance of roles within marriage (for both women and men), and wives had greater power over contraceptive decision-making. The proposed scale-up will involve two variations on the program (one with a focus on reproductive health and another with a focus on financial health), and the researchers will evaluate outcomes immediately, six months, and two years after the session.