Dr. Hailu talked to Mekonnen Teshome, Science Africa’s Addis Ababa Correspondent, about the achievements of NEWA’s project titled: “Enhancing Employment Prospects of Young Graduate Women into high-value Sectors in Ethiopia: An Action Research Project.”
Q. What areas exactly are you involved in under GrOW- EA?
The research project aimed to investigate the impact of integrating soft skills training and job information services on employability and job creation opportunities for young female graduates in three urban centers in Ethiopia.
The study sample comprises representative groups of young female graduates who serve as the subjects of the research. To assess the effectiveness of the intervention, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology is adopted, which is an experimental form of impact evaluation.
Through random assignment, participants are placed into either the intervention group or the control group from the eligible population. This approach enables the testing of the specific planned impacts.
The inclusion of soft skills training and access to job information centers is informed by a rigorous literature review, ensuring a well-informed identification strategy for the intervention.
The participants in the study consist of young female graduates who are seeking employment, as well as those who aspire to establish their own businesses. The research adopts a three-arm design:
- participants receive only soft skills training.
- participants have access to both soft skills training and job information services.
- represents the control group with no access to either intervention.
By evaluating the effects of soft skills training alone and the combined effect of soft skills training with job center services, this three-arm design allows for the estimation of the average impacts of job center services. Additionally, it facilitates a comparison between the effectiveness of the soft skills intervention and the effects of job center services.
In terms of the timeline of the research activities, the participant registration and baseline assessment were conducted between January and February of 2022, random assignment of participants was drawn in March 2022, and soft skills training was provided to the participants between April and May of 2022, and job centers started service in June 2022 in three locations (Addis Ababa, Jimma, and Hawassa).
The midterm assessment interview was made in January 2023. Full results were analyzed during the current reporting period. During the midline assessment, 65% of the target population (1,144 participants) were interviewed
Q. What activities have you carried out so far?
So far, we have carried out the following activities among others.
- Setup job information centers in three sites (Addis Ababa, Hawassa and Jimma)
- Provided soft-skills training
- Conducted the baseline survey
- Conducted mid-term assessment
The mid-term review was gathered in the month of January 2023. Data collection teams, consisting of five female enumerators per site were deployed to gather the mid-term data.
A smartphone-based application (COBOTOOLBOX) was used for gathering the data. Preliminary findings are reflected in the current report as learning points.
The mid-term review gathered telephone-based interviews with 1170 participants (377 from soft skills training only, 410 from soft skills training and job center service participants, and 383 participants from the control group). This is about 79% of those assigned to different study arms at the beginning of the experiment.
The mid-term data include participants’ demographic characteristics, marriage and family life, asset ownership, engagement in economic activity and income, effort to get employment or start their own business, assessment of their soft skills such as emotional regulation skills, communication skills, measures of self-esteem, measures of job readiness, awareness on gender-based violence, and the assessment of the effectiveness of the soft skills training and the job center.
The mid-term review used a mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The use of the mixed method enables us to present the result in a way that speaks in the participant’s language, hence helping elicit the answers leading to an elaborated insight.
The qualitative data helps to understand the holistic participant’s experience – hearing descriptions of the logical sequence of events that enables us to frame the quantitative survey results in a way that makes sense to the reader of the research output.
Q. How did you conduct the qualitative interviews with young graduates?
During the reporting period, interviews were conducted with graduate girls a) who succeeded in getting employment and b) those still trying. In the first case, stories from 15 research participants were collected on how they obtained their jobs or started their own businesses.
We also asked about the level of their income situation, the challenges they faced, and how the soft skills training and job center services from the GrOW project assisted them in improving their situation.
Further, we asked how gender norms and practices affect their job access. Also, the stories of the young female graduates who were unemployed during the mid-term were also collected from 12 participants.
Q. How did you conduct preparation and dissemination of policy briefs on gender in employment policies?
A policy brief on gender in employment policies was developed and shared. The policy recommendations are based on the national employment policy review conducted by the Network of Ethiopian Women Association (NEWA) and supported by GrOW. The overall purpose of the policy review was to provide a systematic review of the gender dimensions of the various national employment policies and their practice in Ethiopia and produce a brief for influencing policy. Ethiopia has put in place several policies, laws, and strategies dealing with national employment.
The laws and policies were reviewed to understand the extent to which gender responsiveness is evidenced. These considerations include, among other things, the extent to which policies encourage access to soft skill training and job information services; whether employment policies consider the gender agenda in employment services; whether employment policies consider women’s household responsibilities; whether policies encourage workplace learning and apprenticeship opportunities; and whether policies encourage gender responsive career guidance and counseling.
The key message from the policy brief was that while some national employment policies take gender concerns into account to some extent, the majority of employment laws, policies, and strategies reflect limitations in incorporating specific workplace challenges faced by women.
There is a need to introduce legal reforms and advocate for their implementation in order to increase women’s workforce participation. The presentation was made at the NEWA weekly webinar.
Q. How did the Job Information Service centers work?
In addition to the facilitation of soft skills training, the major activity of the project is providing services for young graduate women at the three established job information centers.
The project has equipped ECC-SDCO centers with PCs (about 3-4 in each site), printers, and internet connectivity. Currently, the centers provide secretarial support, free internet service, and access to other job-related resources. However, the number of job information center users is limited in Jimma and Addis Ababa for reasons explained in the previous section.
Q. Which knowledge outputs were produced from the project?
A newspaper article was submitted to one of the popular English newspapers in the country. The content of the article was to show the challenges graduate women face to access jobs in higher-paying sectors using the evidence from the baseline survey.
We explained that NEWA and two partner organizations with support from IDRC are implementing a research project that tests whether providing job readiness skills and access to job information services will improve the likelihood of employment, whether wage or self-employment at high-value sectors. We indicated the major obstacles faced and we showed how the soft skills and job information services might address some of those challenges.
We also reported that individuals who score higher on communication, job readiness, and self-esteem are more likely to take steps to establish their own businesses and actively look for higher-paying jobs. We showed this suggests the importance of soft skills to encourage young female graduates’ efforts to succeed in getting jobs or starting their businesses.
The newspaper article also made a potential policy of the research: a) targeted interventions to improve female graduate labor market information and b) advancing female graduate soft skill sets.
In conclusion, we asserted that evidence-based interventions are effective in addressing youth employment issues, and NEWA will share regular insights with stakeholders to foster dialogue about potential policy changes on youth employment in general and female graduate employment in particular.
Radio program (Gender integration of National employment policies). This activity was not performed as planned but will be conducted in the next reporting period. Now that the policy brief and national employment review are completed, and the budget is released, the radio program will be aired as soon as possible during the next reporting period.
Follow-up: As a routine exercise, the monitoring visits are conducted by NEWA and implementing partners (ECC-SADCO and Abamela). During the visits, review meetings are conducted with field officers to understand the success and challenges that might be encountered at research sites and how the research project is being implemented.
Q. Who are your key target audiences and beneficiaries?
The Ministry of Labor and Skills, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs, Graduate Women
Q. What are the key challenges/limitations during the project implementation?
The research effort encountered difficulties due to partial compliance with one of the treatment arms. This means that not enough data was available to make analyses about those who benefited from both soft skills training and job information services due to the low utilization of job information centers.
However, since we are remaining with about 9 months of the project, the management has decided to make all efforts to increase center utilization by improving services and also strengthening contact with the project participants. This way we intend to improve the completion of the treatment design.
Q. What solutions are you aiming to offer?
The objectives of the research project are to:
- Test whether and how soft skills, market information, or a combination of the two can improve employment prospects and income of young graduates;
- Develop a work readiness model that works to enhance employability for young graduates, with a potential for scale-up;
- Inform public and private sector actions aimed at facilitating young women’s gainful employment in high-value sectors.
Q. What differences are you making?
We submitted a policy engagement strategy to the GrOW team where we set forth the vision and operating principles that will guide and advance GrOW research project engagement with the policymakers and practitioners, with an emphasis on promoting the GrOW research visibility.
The strategy identified positive forces and entities that may push back. An occasion for engagement was created during the initial GrOW research phase when NEWA entered an MOU with the Ministry of Labour and Skills (MoLS).
During the initial dialogue session, the key stakeholder, MoLS, indicated that they were trying to promote employment services by transforming some existing youth centers into job information centers in urban areas but also indicated that they were looking for evidence of what works for successful job center operations.
An opportunity to share research results was created. We engaged the ministry from the beginning and we have been sharing results continuously.
For instance, the head of the Skills department from the Ministry was present when findings from the mid-term were presented during the reporting period. We emphasized the need for soft skills training and also the ministry to consider the following issues in its job information service centers: location, quality and quantity of services, strong IT infrastructure, and the need to consider gender sensitivity to job information center establishment.
MoLS has been very receptive to those ideas and agreed to consider them in the design. For example, location accessibility to major infrastructure was made as one of the criteria for a section of centers thereby influencing the attitude and behavior of the policymakers.
