Empowering women and sensitizing men: impact of a complex gender-transformative intervention on socio-economic, maternal and child health outcomes in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) carries a high burden of food insecurity in absolute numbers. Poverty is widespread; the level of food insecurity is alarming. Maternal and child mortality remain a huge challenge although the World Health Organisation has stated that approximately 90% of deaths can be avoided with timely access to maternal health services. The Eastern DRC is particularly affected, suffering from conflicts and armed rebellions for decades now. To increase economic gains and maximize available resources at the household level, a program initiated Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA) to empower women economically. Concomitantly to VSLA, in order to reduce gender-based violence (GBV) against women, men were sensitized to positive masculinity using a peer-to-peer approach.
To assess the social impact of this program, this doctoral thesis employed a mixed-method approach, using quantitative and qualitative methods in parallel. The main objectives of this thesis were to assess the impacts of combining women’s empowerment and men’s sensitization towards gender equity on socio-economic outcomes (income, resilience, food insecurity, women's participation in decision-making at the household level, tolerance to gender-based violence against women, neighbor and couple cohesion); on maternal health services use (skilled birth and antenatal care attendance) and family planning (FP) use; and on child nutritional status. This thesis also explored family planning challenges through a gender lens.
This work sheds light on the ways gender-transformative approaches can be used to improve household socio-economic levels, and maternal and child health.