Nurture not nature? How young women can learn to better wield economic power | Heather Stewart
Guardian AU Business
β’Sun, 30 Aug 2026 14:52:58 GMT
π° What Happened
Heather Stewart's column reports on a research project in Zambia in which groups of 12- and 13-year-old girls received just 12 hours of negotiation classes over three weeks, delivered by local young women who had completed their schooling and helped develop the curriculum. Follow-up analysis more than a decade later found the girls who took the lessons stayed in school longer, were more likely to graduate from college and were less likely to marry a much older man, compared with a control group given 'empowerment' classes without the negotiation training.
π The Backstory
The research was led by a team of female US academics, including Wharton economics professor Corinne Low, who have been gathering data for more than a decade. It tests whether the ability to wield economic power deftly β a necessity for women in patriarchal societies β can be taught.
π― Why It Matters
The findings suggest a small, cheap intervention can have long-term effects on young women's education and life choices. That makes negotiation training a potentially high-value tool for development programmes seeking to improve women's economic outcomes.
Heather Stewart's column reports on a research project in Zambia in which groups of 12- and 13-year-old girls received just 12 hours of negotiation classes over three weeks, delivered by local young women who had completed their schooling and helped develop the curriculum. Follow-up analysis more than a decade later found the girls who took the lessons stayed in school longer, were more likely to graduate from college and were less likely to marry a much older man, compared with a control group given 'empowerment' classes without the negotiation training.
The research was led by a team of female US academics, including Wharton economics professor Corinne Low, who have been gathering data for more than a decade. It tests whether the ability to wield economic power deftly β a necessity for women in patriarchal societies β can be taught.
The findings suggest a small, cheap intervention can have long-term effects on young women's education and life choices. That makes negotiation training a potentially high-value tool for development programmes seeking to improve women's economic outcomes.