Liberia Women Economic Empowerment Project (LWEP)

The Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), a World Bank Group (WBG) initiative, aims to advance gender equality through impactful projects and research. As part of this initiative, the Liberia Women Empowerment Project (LWEP) is designed to address significant barriers to women’s empowerment in Liberia, where entrenched social norms restrict women’s economic opportunities and contribute to high levels of gender-based violence (GBV). The project will integrate the SASA! approach, which has been shown to be effective at transforming harmful gender norms and reducing intimate partner violence (IPV), with livelihood grants intended to enhance economic opportunities for women.

The LWEP project will employ a randomized control trial (RCT) to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of SASA! at scale and compare the impacts of combining it with economic support versus implementing each component separately. This approach will fill critical knowledge gaps and provide evidence-based strategies to advance women’s empowerment in a fragile context where prevailing social norms and economic challenges are prevalent.

With the support of the World Bank and other stakeholders, the research team will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of LWEP activities, which will be carried out by the service provider. This evaluation will focus on assessing the program’s effectiveness in transforming social norms, reducing intimate partner violence (IPV) on a large scale, and contributing to women’s social and economic empowerment.