In establishing whether _Mahila Samakhya_ has a significant impact on female empowerment, we account for two potential sources of endogeneity: (1) the program’s choice of communities in which to operate, and (2) the individual’s choice of whether to participate. We conduct this analysis in five stages. First, we estimate an intent-to-treat (ITT) effect of the program by comparing the bargaining power outcomes of treated and untreated women. Second, we consider the potential of differences among women in communities that receive the program and those in communities without. We match non-participants in treated districts (“non-participants”) and women in untreated districts (“the untreated”), to examine whether they are significantly different from each other. We also compare census data on indicators of female bargaining power in the blocks where the program was placed to the blocks where it was not placed from before the _Mahila Samakhya_ intervention to find no significant differences between treated and untreated blocks. All of our results suggest that the program was not targeted in its placement.

Third, we test whether program participants are significantly more empowered than similar women from untreated districts to determine whether the program has a significant treatment effect. Using instrumental variables and matching, we compare pre-determined levels of empowerment and empowerment outcomes (similar to a differences-in-differences approach) to find that even after accounting for the pre-determined level of empowerment, the program significantly improves access to employment, physical mobility, and political participation. Our instrument relies on the roll-out of the program to control for selection in the participation decision. Using both approaches, we find a positive, significant treatment effect of the program on women’s empowerment outcomes; participants are more likely to have access to outside employment, are able to leave the house without permission and are more likely to attend village council meetings, although this last effect is not significant in all specifications. The marginal effects from the IV approach emphasize the potential for large numbers of women to benefit from interventions like _Mahila Samakhya_ . These results are qualitatively similar to the ITT effects estimated, and suggest that our instrument adequately controls for sample selection.

Fourth, to explore the program’s mechanism, we focus on participants who do not work, comparing them to untreated women who also do not work. Using both instrumental variables and matching, we find that even participants who do not benefit from the enhanced employability from participation are significantly more likely to leave the house without permission. We also consider those women who participate in MS but do not have access to outside work. Results suggest that participants who do not have access to outside employment are more likely than non-participants without access to outside employment to leave the house without permission and to participate in the village council. Thus, whether through increasing her reservation wage or by changing social norms, MS appears to improve outcomes even for those women not able to benefit directly from the intended increase in own income.

Fifth, we we attempt to isolate the influence effect of MS by comparing non-participants to untreated women to test for the presence of spillover effects in treated areas. We are interested in knowing whether MS can affect non-participants in a village by changing social norms. We find that non-participants in treated villages have greater access to outside employment, greater physical mobility and higher attendance of village council meetings than untreated women, which point to the positive spillover effects of _Mahila Samakhya_ .

Most studies of program impact analyze interventions targeted at the individual. Only a small number of papers examine community-level interventions because these programs often aim to change outcomes that are difficult to measure and use methods that combine direct individual intervention (education) with the process of the intervention (community meetings). Thus, evaluating 3