Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/318543 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods No. 2025/5
Publisher: 
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
Abstract: 
In poor countries, the interaction of early marriage, early motherhood, and low educational attainment disempowers women and limits their life opportunities. Even as countries grow richer, gender inequality is often sustained by social norms, thereby limiting welfare gains from women's empowerment. I investigate the use of media as a cheap and scalable policy to empower women. In 2006, India enacted a community radio policy that grants radio licenses to NGOs and educational institutions with the aim to foster local development. I collect original data on the content and coverage areas of all 250+ radio stations. I uncover women's empowerment as a key theme through topic modeling and ChatGPT-based analyses of radio show recordings. For identification, I exploit topography-driven variation in radio access and develop a novel econometric approach to deal with randomly displaced geolocated household data. The results show that women exposed to radio gain an additional 0.3 years of education and are 4.1pp (11%) more likely to obtain a secondary degree. In line with increased education, exposure reduces child marriages by 1.4pp (22%) and fertility of young women by around 10% while they are 11pp more likely to exhibit autonomy in household decisions. The findings demonstrate that community media can effectively address gender inequality.
Subjects: 
Mass Media
Policy
Women Empowerment
Spatial Econometrics
Education
JEL: 
O12
J13
J16
J18
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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