Inculcating Soft Skills at Scale: Women’s Empowerment Through Part-Time Government Employment

Conservative gender norms keep many Indian women out of the labor force and prevent them from cultivating soft skills that facilitate entrepreneurial and workplace success. This project will study whether (a) part-time government employment in the Indian state of Meghalaya’s “social audit” program can build women’s soft skills and support future employment; (b) scalable soft skills training for social auditors can enhance their auditing performance and future work prospects. As Meghalaya expands recruitment of women from self-help groups to serve as social auditors, our pilot will assess the feasibility of two key components for a future RCT: offering soft skills training and randomizing access to auditor jobs. Our findings will help Meghalaya and other Indian states strengthen their social audits program and local accountability while generating insights on how to scalably build soft skills for marginalized women.