Gender disparity in education is a global challenge. School-age girls are often denied equal opportunities as enjoyed by boys. This research aims to improve the poor state of female education in Pakistan by exploring options to develop a community space for college age girls in Swat. This thesis focuses on the former princely state of Swat in northern Pakistan, an example of a place whose history of prioritizing education is largely overlooked. The Swat state heavily promoted education, but following its merger with Pakistan in 1969, many of the institutions it had created faltered. The Taliban takeover of the area in 2007 – 2009 further exacerbated the decline of education in the valley. Drawing upon the experiences of Ophelia’s Place in Eugene, Oregon, and field interviews with over a hundred college girls and administrators, I have identified activities to enhance girls’ education in Swat by developing innovative after-school possibilities.

This dissertation contains three distinct chapters considering different challenges faced by a developing country; India. Chapter 1. Food price spikes induced by hot weather could be a threat to food security, human health and poverty. It could exacerbate the health status of households by reducing the nutrient food choices, particularly among the vulnerable groups who already have a more frail status. This paper examines the first possible causal link between milk average market price and hot weather in the short run at the household level in India. Using Human Development Survey data, it is empirically showed that hot weather has a significant adverse impact on the price in rural India. The impacts are more pronounced for non-poor families in both rural and urban areas. The effects are robust to alternative heat metrics. The paper further investigates the effect of hot weather on households' milk consumption. Evidence suggests that low-income (poor) families with purchased consumption, both in rural and urban areas, are significantly adversely affected compared to those with homegrown product. Chapter 2. Health-related behaviour and, in particular, attending antenatal care during pregnancy is essential to reduce the risk of pregnancy complications, stillbirth, and maternal mortality. This paper estimates the causal effect of years of formal education on the likelihood that a pregnant woman in India attends natal care and screening services. Despite the importance, insufficient documents exist on the determinants of natal care usage in developing countries. The current study investigates for the first time the hypothesis that women’s schooling attainments might have a causal impact on natal care usage in India. Drawing on the nationally representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS-II) and instrumenting for years of schooling with plausibly exogenous variation in age at first menarche, I find that delayed age at menarche significantly increases formal education. Further, evidence suggests that an additional year of schooling significantly enhances the likelihood of uptaking the antenatal checkups. However, attending a sonogram/ultrasound does not appear to be significant. Chapter 3. Adolescent girls are amongst the vulnerable groups exposed to the risks that challenge their healthy development into young women. India's Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (SABLA) program was designed to address such challenges by building health awareness and encouraging decision-making autonomy as the first steps towards real change in women’s development. Using data from the nationally representative India Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS), with plausibly exogenous variation in the program’s rollout across districts and birth cohorts, we provide evidence that exposure to SABLA increases the likelihood of having knowledge of family planning and diarrhoea treatment, using contraception, and autonomy in personal financial decision-making for exposed women. The effects are more pronounced for women residing in urban areas, for women who have secondary education or higher, and primarily for Muslim women.