Designing and Implementing a Gender-Transformative Adaptation of the Husbands Schools in Niger: Formative research report

Husbands Schools are a community led initiative to enhance reproductive, maternal, and newborn and child health (RMNCH) in West Africa, first introduced by UNFPA in Niger in 2007. Evidence generated since then has shown that Husbands Schools improve engagement with prenatal care, assisted delivery, and family planning. Despite this success and having been widely scaled-up throughout the West African region, there is little evidence that the initiative has successfully challenged deeply entrenched gender norms and power dynamics. Agency for All aims to design, implement, and evaluate a gender-transformative adaptation of the Husbands Schools model within Save the Children’s Wadata Project in Zinder, Niger. As an essential first step toward achieving these aims, formative research was conducted in 2023 in two departments in Zinder (Magaria and Damagaram Takaya) to explore the meaning of gender equity, agency, and power in the Nigerien context, including the roles of families and communities in influencing gender-equitable norms.