Can teaching teenage girls how to negotiate help them stay in school, marry later, and form more equal relationships? In 2013, Wharton business economics and public policy professor Corinne Low and her co-authors introduced a negotiation skills course for eighth-grade girls in low-income areas of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital. To test whether it was the negotiation lessons that made the difference on outcomes, the researchers split roughly 2,400 girls into three groups: one received negotiation training, one took part in a group program without the negotiation lessons, and one received no intervention. The “placebo” program — which offered support but no negotiation training — had little impact on marriage, sexual behavior, or gender attitudes. But we’d like to see it reach secondary school girls across sub-Saharan Africa.”