Introduction
Gender gaps in political participation are a pervasive challenge throughout the developing world (Prillaman Reference Prillaman2023; Robinson and Gottlieb Reference Robinson and Gottlieb2021; Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb2016; Coffé and Bolzendahl Reference Coffé and Bolzendahl2010). A common source of persistent gaps is limited access to political information, hampering citizens’ ability to formulate their preferences or effectively communicate those preferences to their representatives (Giné and Mansuri Reference Giné and Mansuri2018; Grossman, Humphreys and Sacramone-Lutz Reference Grossman, Humphreys and Sacramone-Lutz2014; Banerjee et al. Reference Banerjee, Kumar, Pande and Su2011). The problem is particularly severe in war-torn countries, where violence tends to exacerbate existing inequities in access to information or other critical resources that may mediate political participation (Bakken and Buhaug Reference Bakken and Buhaug2021; Platteau, Somville andWahhaj Reference Platteau, Somville and Wahhaj2014; Buvinic et al. Reference Buvinic, Das Gupta, Casabonne and Verwimp2013). Media outlets, typically owned or controlled by the elites, tend to offer partisan and biased information (Arsenault, Himelfarb and Abbott Reference Arsenault, Himelfarb and Abbott2011), while elites often use their position to limit the release of relevant information through secrecy laws or intimidation (Conroy-Krutz Reference Conroy-Krutz2018).
Prior research suggests that politically relevant information can help flatten gender disparities (Grossman, Humphreys and Sacramone-Lutz Reference Grossman, Humphreys and Sacramone-Lutz2014; Mvukiyehe and Samii Reference Mvukiyehe and Samii2017; Giné and Mansuri Reference Giné and Mansuri2018; Finkel Reference Finkel2002; Bidwell, Casey and Glennerster Reference Bidwell, Casey and Glennerster2020; Banerjee et al. Reference Banerjee, Kumar, Pande and Su2011; Verba, Schlozman and Brady Reference Verba, Schlozman and Brady1995). However, our understanding of this link is still limited for at least three reasons. First, existing studies have not paid adequate attention to women’s access to information in the first place, overlooking the tendency of men’s control of critical resources, such as radio or mobile phones that mediate political participation (Cheema et al. Reference Cheema, Khan, Liaqat and Mohmand2023; Gazeaud et al. Reference Gazeaud, Khan, Mvukiyehe and Sterck2023). As Gillwald, Milek and Stork (Reference Gillwald, Milek and Stork2010) note in their multi-country study, ‘although women may be at home more, they tend to listen to the radio less than men, even though they might have a similar education and income. This is often due to the nature of their work or to not having access to a radio or not being able to select which programs to listen to if male members of the household are present.’ Second, while a growing number of interventions target women through civic and voter education campaigns designed to provide politically relevant information (Giné and Mansuri Reference Giné and Mansuri2018; Ichino and Nathan Reference Ichino and Nathan2017; Preece Reference Preece2016), few of these interventions are gender-sensitive, let alone transformative. Some studies have suggested such interventions may backfire if gender aspects are not seriously taken into account (see Gottlieb’s (Reference Gottlieb2016) study in war-torn Mali).Footnote 1 Third, the credibility of information sources is too often taken for granted (Banerjee et al. Reference Banerjee, Kumar, Pande and Su2011) – a particular problem in war-torn countries, where independent media capable of providing objective and credible information to voters tends to be in short supply (Badrinathan Reference Badrinathan2021; Peisakhin and Rozenas Reference Peisakhin and Rozenas2018; Deane Reference Deane2013).
This study, in the context of Liberia’s 2011 general election, investigates the effect of politically relevant information provided through mass media on rural women’s political participation. It leverages the ‘access to information’ pilot programme that aimed to increase women’s exposure to special elections programming by the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) Radio, which enjoyed unrivalled popularity and trust among Liberian voters at the time. Implemented by a local civil society organization, the intervention (i) provided a radio to groups of women in treated villages and (ii) organized them to participate in a series of weekly group sessions focused on listening to and discussing UNMIL radio’s special elections programmes. This intervention was premised on information constraints – unlike other barriers embedded in existing power structures, or unequal access to material resources, difficult to eliminate in the short-term – being more malleable, and addressable relatively quickly and at a lower cost (Giné and Mansuri Reference Giné and Mansuri2018).
The intervention ran for five weeks in the two months preceding the general election in November 2011, followed by endline surveys in treatment and control communities shortly after the elections. I collected data on a broad range of attitudinal and behavioural outcomes from a sample of women who were the direct target of the intervention and a sample of men who were not directly targeted by the intervention, to ascertain its impacts on (i) the level and quality of women’s political participation and (ii) the flattening of gender gaps in political participation. This paper reports findings from the experiment and discusses their implications for policy and future research.
In the rest of this paper, I describe the experimental design and empirical strategy in Section 2, present results in Section 3, discuss potential mechanisms in Section 4, and conclude in section 5.
Experimental Design and Data
The Context
Descriptive statistics from Afrobarometer data show that in post-war Liberia, women’s participation rates lag behind the rates of their male counterparts on measures such as voting, community involvement, and associational life, as well as on such attitudinal indicators as interest in public affairs or political efficacy.Footnote 2 For instance, when it comes to actual political behaviours, men outpaced women in participatory measures. A notable 78.3 per cent of men feel they can freely join political organizations, a freedom that only 69.2 per cent of women feel they have (See Figure SI 3). A similar pattern exists with respect to attitudinal measures. Men tended to engage in political conversations more frequently, with 18 per cent reporting regular discussions compared to 8 per cent of women (Figure SI 2). Interestingly, in the realm of political efficacy, women seem to exhibit a stronger resolve to question leadership, diverging from men’s tendency to show deference to authority. These gaps are notably wider in rural areas than in urban areas. Key barriers contributing to these gaps include low access to political information owing to lack of control over information media such as radio, and low usage of mobile phones and internet access. For instance, according to DHS data, the proportion of women owning information sources is low, with merely 36.6 per cent of women owning radios and 34.5 per cent owning cell phones (See Figures SI 9 and SI 10). Afrobarometer data also indicates similar findings: fewer than 53.6 per cent of women have ever used mobile phones, and more than 90 per cent of women lack access to the internet (See Figure SI 11 and SI 12), even for those with primary education or higher.
Over half the women surveyed by the United Nations (2014) reported either not having access to quality information or were uncertain whether they had access: radio was identified as the most frequent source of news and information about politics.Footnote 3 The Carter Center likewise concluded that Liberian ‘women do not access information as easily or as frequently as do men’.Footnote 4 Liberia typified postwar societies: a low information environment with poor media infrastructure and limited media choices, along with a lack of in-depth reporting, source transparency issues, and a tendency to align with government narratives (Fair Reference Fair2013; Spurk, Lopata and Keel Reference Spurk, Lopata and Keel2010). Liberian women have been targets of misinformation and disinformation, especially during electoral campaigns (Adams Reference Adams2016; Anderson, Diabah and Afrakoma hMensa Reference Anderson, Diabah and Afrakoma hMensa2011).
Increasing access to political information (qualitatively and quantitatively) has been integral to postwar peacebuilding efforts.Footnote 5 Whether these efforts have translated into narrowing gender gaps in media consumption and political participation is our still-open empirical question.
Intervention and hypotheses
Established in 2003 at the end of Liberia’s 14-year civil war, UNMIL Radio is a popular information source with the widest radio coverage in the country. It filled an important media void and was perceived as the most objective and trustworthy information source.Footnote 6 As one of the Radio’s first producers put it: ‘Coming out of a war in which the local media had been a part, the people of Liberia were desperate for a voice they could trust’.Footnote 7 While UNMIL Radio enjoyed widespread listenership and high credibility, listenership levels have been uneven, with women generally having less opportunity than men to access and engage with its programming (Mvukiyehe and Samii Reference Mvukiyehe and Samii2017, Reference Mvukiyehe and Samii2010). The ‘access to information’ pilot programme sought to overcome this informational barrier to women voters and enable equal participation in the political process. The intervention (i) provided women in selected communities with a radio and (ii) organized them to participate in a series of weekly group listening sessions to UNMIL Radio’s special programmes on elections.
The information component of the intervention focused on five special election programmes.Footnote 8 Some programmes, such as Dis Voting Ting, provided civic education about the importance of political participation, while others, such as Back to the Ballot Box, informed voters about the voting process (for example, how to correctly cast the vote or the importance of secret balloting). Political Happenings and Hot Seat brought voters information about political campaigns and served as a forum for political aspirants to debate their agendas. Finally, Around Town was an open mic programme allowing voters from different towns to express their opinions about the upcoming elections and their expectations from aspirant leaders.
Listening groups of women were set up in randomly allocated treatment communities to isolate programme effects. Participants met three times per week to listen to a specific electoral programme in real-time, followed by a discussion facilitated by trained staff from the implementing partner organization. For the fourth weekly meeting, groups were joined by staff from the implementing partner to listen to and discuss a pre-recorded programme. Implementing staff recorded a range of information, including the number of women and men attending the sessions, topics discussed, participants’ opinions and reactions, and level of enthusiasm for engagement with the topics. Each session lasted two hours on average. In this bundled treatment, combining radio provision, information provision, and to some extent facilitated group – each of which could have an independent effect – I focus on the information provision treatment, conceptually aligning this study with other civic and voter education interventions (for example, Hyde, Lamb and Samet (Reference Hyde, Lamb and Samet2023), Finkel and Lim (Reference Finkel and Lim2021), and Mvukiyehe and Samii (Reference Mvukiyehe and Samii2017)), where the treatment of interest is the political information being transmitted rather than the medium of transmission.Footnote 9
Importantly, while the programme was explicit in its goal of focusing on women, men were not explicitly excluded or discouraged. Though the discussions were largely driven by issues and concerns prioritized by the women, in most villages a relatively high proportion of men (20 per cent on average) also attended the sessions. Each intervention consisted of at least fifteen listening sessions over a period of five weeks. The partner organization monitored programme implementation weekly, in addition to their role in facilitation.
UNMIL Radio was by far the most trusted news source compared to other local media outlets, deemed the most reliable and detailed in its coverage of political happenings and news; community radio was a distant second choice, attracting one listener for every five UNMIL radio listeners.Footnote 10 UNMIL Radio’s trustworthiness matters as a key driving factor behind its popularity with the Liberian public – both women and men – especially on electoral issues (and general political issues), making it the most appropriate medium for this treatment.
Identification strategy
The study targeted forty rural communities, with an average village size of around 1,500 households. I used a matched pairs design as a basis for selection. First, the local partner organization selected eighty communities from two counties (Bomi and Rural Montserrado) deemed potential beneficiaries of the programme. The research team then carried out a community assessment survey in each of these to gather demographic and socioeconomic statistics based on the 2008 census by the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS), a government agency. This information was used along with the staff’s own knowledge of these areas to create community pairs that were similar in terms of geographic and socioeconomic characteristics such as population size, number of adult women, quality of dwellings, access to main roads, infrastructure quality, ethnicity, religion, and economic activity. The radio programme was assigned to one community in each pair by rolling a die. Figure 1 depicts the forty study towns by treatment status.
Figure 1. Study Locations.
Outcomes measurement and data
Following the empirical literature, I define political participation as activities by citizens that are aimed at influencing the selection of governmental personnel and/or government policy (Mvukiyehe Reference Mvukiyehe2018; Verba, Schlozman and Brady Reference Verba, Schlozman and Brady1995). This definition is broad enough to encompass both formal/institutional forms of participation such as voting or involvement in electoral processes and less formal/institutional forms of participation such as participation in community meetings or contacting traditional leaders (Gottlieb’s Reference Gottlieb2016; Coffé and Bolzendahl Reference Coffé and Bolzendahl2010). Modes of political participation used in the survey were organized around dimensions established in the empirical literature (Mvukiyehe and Samii Reference Mvukiyehe and Samii2017; Mvukiyehe Reference Mvukiyehe2018; Bratton Reference Bratton1999):
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The voting mode, encompassing voting in the 2011 election;
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The campaigning mode, including contributions in time and/or money to a political campaign and political rally attendance;
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The contacting mode, including contact with one’s representative in the national assembly or senate, or contact with a government official or agency;
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The communing mode, encompassing community meeting attendance, speech and the contacting of community leaders;
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The protesting mode, encompassing a wide range of variables such as political demonstrations or calling into radio stations to complain about public officials.
The study estimates programme effects on each of these modes of political participation (as well as their constitutive indicators) and on the overall measure of political participation that combines some or all these dimensions.
Sample and data collection
Data collection targeted all forty villages in the sample (twenty each of the treatment and control villages). Given that the unit of treatment in this study is the village, my sampling frame encompasses all eligible female and male voters in each village. In each village, I conducted interviews with a sample of fifteen households – ten with female respondents and five with male respondents – which I estimated to be adequate for the analysis.Footnote 11 The total target sample comprises 400 females and 200 males. The response rate was an astonishing 97 per cent – a feat achieved thanks to flexible scheduling designed around women’s availability – providing a strongly suggestive technique for avoiding bias in who gets treated and who gets surveyed.
Household surveys served as my main source of outcome data.Footnote 12 Additionally, observable (behavioural) measures of many outcomes were included as a cleaner indicator of individuals’ propensity to participate (for example, sending a message to political leaders or signing a petition calling on presidential candidates to abstain from election violence), which are designed to send a costly signal (Collier and Vicente Reference Collier and Vicente2014). I developed the survey instrument in collaboration with LISGIS, the implementing agency, and refined it through several rounds of pilot testing and field testing. I employed the same survey instruments in both the female and male samples. Survey interviews were conducted by experienced, professional enumerators from LISGIS trained by the Research Team and for the most part, were delivered in Liberian English, which most respondents understood and spoke.
Fieldwork for both rollout and data gathering took place from August–December 2011.Footnote 13
Analysis and Results
Estimation strategy
The programme was successfully rolled out across all twenty targeted villages. Attendance levels were relatively high throughout the fifteen facilitated sessions available over a five-week intervention period.Footnote 14
The main analysis focuses on the intervention’s Intent-To-Treat (ITT) effects, thereby considering all adult individuals in treated communities as programme beneficiaries, regardless of whether or the extent to which they participated in the programme (to wit, weekly listenership sessions). Having achieved balance (see SI 2E), I fit regression models of outcomes on an indicator variable for the intervention. I estimate programme effects on both individual outcome indicators and on the ‘overall’ aggregate measure of political participation. For the latter, an index measure was calculated by averaging across standardized means of individual outcome indicators. I estimate the following linear regression:
$${Y_{iv}} = {\beta _0} + {\beta _1}{\rm{UNMIL\ Radi}}{{\rm{o}}_v} + {X_v}\delta + {\varepsilon _{iv}}$$
Where:
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${Y_{iv}}:$
is the overall standardized participation score for individual i in village v. This measure has two additional variations – one that captures overall political participation through institutionalized forms (for example, voting, attending political rallies, etc.) and less institutionalized forms (for example, attending village meetings or contacting traditional leaders.) -
$UNMILRadio:$
is a dummy variable indicating whether the village received the intervention or not.
-
$X:$
represents matched pair fixed effects. I control for this to allow for the possibility that there are differences between pairs that influence political participation.
-
${\varepsilon _{iv}}$
is an error term assumed to be clustered at the village level.
To avoid over-rejection of the null hypothesis due to multiple comparisons, I also estimate Average Standardized Treatment Effects (ASTEs) following the approach pioneered by Kling et al. (Reference Kling, Liebman and Katz2007).Footnote 15
For marginal effects on individual outcome indicators, since most of these are dichotomous, I estimate a probit model with a simple regression equation of the following general form:
$$Pr({Y_{it}}) = {\beta _0} + {\beta _1}{\rm{ UNMIL\ Radi}}{{\rm{o}}_t} + {X_t}\delta + {\varepsilon _{it}}$$
Where:
$Pr({Y_{it}} = 1):$
is the probability of person
$i$
in town
$t$
engaging in the relevant political activity. Each of the outcome indicators of political participation is binary and takes on the value of 1 if the person is engaged in it and 0 otherwise. All other terms are defined as in equation 1.
Results
The primary focus in this analysis is on the UNMIL Radio programme’s effects on women’s political participation; this will be the locus of the discussion, while the effects of the programme on gender gaps are ascertained indirectly by way of comparing outcomes for the two genders. Figure 2 presents the mean effects of UNMIL Radio on women’s (and men’s) political participation estimated with OLS regressions. Figure 3 presents marginal effects on individual outcome indicators from probit estimations.Footnote 16 I also check the robustness of my findings by controlling for unbalanced (pre-treatment) covariates.Footnote 17
Figure 2. Effects on political participation indices.
Figure 3. Effects on political participation outcomes.
As can be seen in Figure 2, the intervention has positive effects on the overall political participation of women, with an estimated mean effect of 0.21 standard deviations, statistically significant at the 1 per cent level. The effects are virtually similar for more institutional/formal and less institutional/informal forms of political participation. These effect sizes represent a relatively large difference in participation rates between communities that did and did not receive the intervention. Further, from Figure 3, it appears that these effects are mostly driven by voting, participation in political rallies, protests, attendance, and speaking at local community meetings unrelated to the intervention.
I estimate a 5 percentage point increase in the attendance of community meetings and a 10 percentage point increase in the probability of speaking out in such gatherings, the measures that displayed the largest gender gaps initially. These results are significant at the 5 per cent levels or better.
By contrast, the results on the men’s sample show no evidence of the programme’s positive effects on overall levels or individual outcome measures of participation. If anything, results on a few individual level outcomes – in particular political rallies attendance, contacting government officials and traditional leaders, and attending and speaking at community meetings – show relatively large negative and statistically significant effects on men but, again, the overall mean effects are null. The results on men are not unexpected because they were not specifically targeted by the programme and suggest that, contrary to findings in other studies (for example, Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb2016), the presence of men in listenership sessions did not have perverse effects on women’s political participation. Taken together, these results suggest that even short-term and logistically less demanding broadcast interventions enhance women’s political participation without necessarily increasing or taking away from men, thereby contributing to the narrowing of gender gaps in political participation.
The study also looked at the heterogeneous effects on several dimensions, including marital status, age, schooling, employment and income, and by information sources.Footnote 18 Overall, the results, while tentative, do suggest the programme effects were concentrated among women with low information at the baseline (for example, those with no formal schooling, unpaid work, below median income, etc.) Finally, I also investigate potential geographic spillovers. I do not expect significant spillovers because the villages are relatively distant from one another (the minimum and median distance between two pairs of treatment and control villages is around three and twenty-two km respectively), and accessibility is difficult.Footnote 19 Even if spillovers were present, this would suggest my estimates underestimate the true effects. Out of thoroughness, I performed a formal analysis for geographical spillovers (See SI 9 for detailed method and estimates): the programme effect is robust to the inclusion of nearby treated or control households in the female sample.
Mechanisms
This section explores the extent to which the three candidate mechanisms may help explain the relatively strong observed intervention impacts on women’s political participation. I analyze three potential channels linking information provision to political participation: (i) political knowledge and efficacy – women’s understanding of politics and their sense of empowerment to influence political leaders; (ii) liberal orientations – support for liberal norms and values such as political tolerance or non-violence;Footnote 20 and (iii) group dynamics geared towards collective action.Footnote 21 To formally test these mechanisms, I perform mediation analysis following the approach proposed by (Heller et al. Reference Heller, Shah, Guryan, Ludwig, Mullainathan and Pollack2017). Bootstrap Confidence Intervals were constructed by calculating 5,000 iterations. The results are reported in Table 1.Footnote 22
Table 1. Test of candidate mediating mechanisms for UNMIL radio programme
Notes: Column 1 reports the treatment effect of the programme on the mediator candidate index and its components, and Column 2 reports the association between the political participation index and the mediator candidate index for the control group only. Column 3 reports the product of Column 1 and Column 2, divided by the treatment effect of the programme on political participation. Column 3 is the share of the treatment effect explained by the candidate mediator. Standard errors are reported in brackets. Bootstrap Confidence Intervals are reported in parentheses.
As can be seen in Column 1, the UNMIL Radio programme had a direct positive and statistically significant effect on two of the candidate mediators – political efficacy and group coordination (0.26 and 0.29 standard deviations, respectively.) The liberal orientations mechanism shows no explanatory power. Results from Column 2 suggest ‘political efficacy and knowledge’ to be the most plausible candidate mechanism of the observed impact, explaining a third of the total programme effects. The association between women’s political participation and the group coordination mediator index is positive; though not statistically significant at the conventional level, the share of the total effects of UNMIL Radio explained by the group coordination mechanism is a respectable 14 per cent. Notably, the results on individual outcome indicators that make up this index measure reveal that UNMIL Radio had a positive and statistically significant effect on all three indicators associated with membership in civil society groups of a political character (that is, women’s group, peace committee, and democracy/human rights) but not with other group types (for example, economic associations).
The correlations between women’s political participation and these measures are positive, though barely statistically significant, or not at all – possibly due to low power – and the respective shares of total programme impact explained by these mediators are not trivial (8 per cent, 23 per cent, and 18 per cent, respectively.) These results suggest that one way in which the UNMIL Radio programme worked was by activating (or harnessing) the coordination and mobilization potential of pre-existing groups of a political character that were already prepared to take full advantage of the trustworthy information the programme provided. This is consistent with findings from research on the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) that suggest they apply social pressure that in turn increases political participation (Weinschenk et al. Reference Weinschenk, Panagopoulos, Drabot and van der Linden2018). In a similar vein, Hibbs (Reference Hibbs2022) argues that grassroots-facilitated discussions akin to those in this intervention are key to women’s achieving increased empowerment, as they provide space for women to discuss their political views, and promote the language of advocacy, leading towards greater political activism and mobilization.Footnote 23
SI 11B provides detailed qualitative evidence that largely supports the quantitative findings, suggesting political efficacy and group coordination as the mechanisms likely at work, though a handful of quotes also speak to the political orientation mechanism.Footnote 24 In both sets, key themes emphasized by the women include increased knowledge and confidence about the right to vote, voting procedures, and holding politicians accountable; the capacity to organize and to interact with politicians to express their needs; and the opportunity to exchange ideas with fellow residents. Further research is needed to adequately adjudicate these mechanisms.
Conclusion
This study’s findings suggest that exposure to politically relevant information through trustworthy media sources can have meaningful effects on women’s political participation and help flatten gender gaps, even in institutionally weak settings prone to information asymmetries and where traditional mechanisms of political mobilization such as political parties tend to be weak or disorganized (if they exist at all). While this paper finds suggestive evidence for political knowledge/efficacy and for group coordination mechanisms, it cannot make causal claims for the relationships found, nor can other potential mechanisms be ruled out. Experimentally altering the design of information provision interventions to further test the salience of the information itself vs. the experience of discussing it, for example, would be an important avenue for further research. Indeed, within the latter mechanism, it would be interesting to understand whether the effects on political participation occur through peer (social) pressure or through enhanced coordination. Understanding men’s role in this process is also an important area that deserves further research. More research is also needed to ascertain the effects of different components of the types of bundled intervention studied here (for example, information, group facilitation, media type, etc.) and the extent to which they may be complements or substitutes. Finally, future research should investigate sustainability and the cost-effectiveness of such programmes.
Supplementary Material
The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424001066
Data Availability Statement
Replication data for this article can be found in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IMJCJT.
Acknowledgements
This study would not have been possible without the very able contribution of Varney Kamara and Joseph Williams of Liberia Democracy Watch (LDW) as well as the many women and men who participated in the programme and my survey team to whom I am indebted. For helpful comments and feedback, I thank Jack Snyder, Page Fortna, Macartan Humphreys, Cyrus Samii as well as participants in the Resolution 1325 workshop in Uppsala, Sweden. Carlos Guastavino, Aanchal Bagga, Sarah Elven, Alejandra Aponte, and Nausheen Khan for outstanding research assistance. The study received IRB approval from Columbia University, Protocol: IRB-AAAI8753.
Funding Statement
This research was partly funded by Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA). Part of the research was conducted when the author was on a fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Competing Interests
None. Prior to this study, the author served as a consultant for the United Nations Office of Internal Services (UN-OIOS) and evaluated the United Nations Missions in Liberia (UNMIL), using population surveys. However, he and his team of researchers operated with full independence and had no conflict of interest that may have interfered with this research. At no point did the UN, UNMIL or Government of Liberia officials attempt to influence the course of the research, the analysis, drafting of research outputs or conclusions drawn.
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