Men can cook: Effectiveness of a men’s engagement intervention to change attitudes and behaviors in rural Ethiopia

• We investigate the impact of a program that addresses multiple constraints trapping households in poverty, including restrictive gender norms. • At 1-year follow-up, we find that the program leads to improvements in men’s gender equitable attitudes and their involvement in household tasks. • By 3-year follow-up, only treatment arms with the men’s engagement groups continue to have significant impacts on these outcomes. • Results suggest that continued programming may be needed for sustained impacts on gender equitable attitudes and behaviors. Graduation model interventions seek to address multiple barriers constraining households’ exit from poverty, however, few explicitly target restrictive gender norms. Using a randomized controlled trial design, combined with three rounds of data, we investigate the impacts on gender equitable attitudes and behaviors of a graduation program that seeks to address multiple constraints for those in poverty and improve restrictive gender norms in Ethiopia. We find that at 1-year follow-up all treatment arms lead to improvements in men’s gender equitable attitudes and their engagement in household domestic tasks as reported by both men and women; but at 3-year follow-up, impacts are only sustained in the treatment arms that introduced men’s engagement groups after the 1-year follow-up survey to further promote improvements in equitable gender norms.