The Impact of Female Social Networks

Kathryn Vasilaky, University of Maryland

This research isolates the additive impact of female social networks on an agricultural training program for a re-emerging technology in rural Uganda: cotton. We devised a social networking program, randomized at the village level in rural Uganda, to tease out the pure effects of social networking amongst females on female and male headed household agricultural outcomes. A triple difference across treatments shows that the expansion of female's social networks in a rural Uganda, significantly increases males' productivity. Thus, although the effects of females' social networks on own production are weak, overall welfare still increases when females are encouraged to network and share information amongst themselves due to networking spillover effects from females to males. This suggests that development programs that incorporate networking programs alongside standard training for women, can have a significantly greater impact than those that do not, at no additional cost.