Strengthening theories of change in women's group interventions to improve learning.

Background: Supporting women's groups is increasingly seen as an important intervention strategy for advancing women's empowerment, economic outcomes, and family health in low- and middle-income countries. We argue that learning from investments in women's group platforms is often limited by the lack of a well-articulated, evaluable theory of change (ToC) developed by those designing the programmes.

Methods: We first identify a simple set of steps important to specifying a ToC that is evaluable and supports learning (what could be done).