Ethiopian women saw their business profits jump after their husbands took a training class that changed nothing about the men.
April 20, 2026
Original Paper
Conscious Coupling: Engaging Husbands to Address Intrahousehold Constraints for Women Entrepreneurs in Ethiopia
SSRN · 6601557
The Takeaway
Business development programs usually try to fix a woman's lack of capital or a husband's restrictive attitudes. This specific program in Ethiopia included husbands, but the men's behavior remained exactly the same afterward. The real change happened within the women themselves. Seeing their husbands in the training room gave them the confidence to negotiate and communicate more effectively at home. Their profits rose because they learned how to navigate their existing domestic lives better. Success in this context was about social engineering rather than just handing out business advice.
From the abstract
Intrahousehold dynamics are frequently cited as a key constraint to women’s economic achievement. Using a randomized controlled trial, we test whether husband’s participation increases the returns to a women’s entrepreneurship program that was adapted to build relational skills and address household constraints. Married women entrepreneurs are randomly assigned to participate alone, with their husbands, or to a control group. Findings suggest that the program leads to an increase in the adoption