Agency and Empowerment for Adolescent Girls: An Intentional Approach to Policy and Programming

Abstract

As national governments roll out COVID response plans, an opportunity arises to re-cast adolescent girls’ programs to centrally anchor them on girls’ voices, leadership, ambitions, and assets in development policies and programs. Drawing together the evidence on what we know works for adolescent girls, as well as the growing literature on positive strengths-based programming which are gradually and increasingly being applied, this commentary calls for a girl-intentional approach to policy and programming. A girl-intentional approach is described through 3 case studies, which illustrate the additionality of new or improved adolescent knowledge, skills, and competencies; improved opportunities for adolescent engagement, voice, and agency; improved community safety and support; stronger, healthier relationships; and stronger and healthier norms, attitudes, values, and goals. The case studies describe program hooks that facilitate operationalization, point to measurable outcomes, and identify opportunities for scale, including the re-opening of schools. Overall, inter-sectoral solutions that address the myriad of issues affecting an adolescent girl’s life and tackle pervasive gender inequities require greater emphasis by development actors and national governments.

Strengthening adolescent agency for optimal health outcomes

“…Increasingly, health programmes are applying approaches to youth development 12 that build on an individual’s strengths (competencies, assets, agency) and centre around adolescents’ voices. 11 12 These approaches recognise that adolescents are participants in their own development and when provided with timely and critical support can thrive, even in adverse situations, and drive change and innovation for their own health and wellbeing. 13 …”

COVID-19 and the gendered impacts on adolescent wellbeing: Evidence from a cross-sectional study of locally adapted measures in Ethiopia, Jordan, and Palestine

“…Given the importance of young people for the prosperity of future generations, 67 our findings highlight the need to focus attention on the most vulnerable, with greater attention to gender-and age-responsive social protection as an important policy tool to ensure an equitable post-pandemic recovery for adolescent boys and girls. 64,68 In particular, given that household-level social protection does appear to be protective for the less vulnerable part of the study population (who themselves are still highly vulnerable) suggests that the most vulnerable need a greater level of economic support to buttress resilient coping. 69 Moreover, because social protection support appears to be inadequate to offset restrictive gender norms, especially around girls' time use, the findings also point to the importance of greater consideration of complementary or 'plus' measures that tackle not just economic but also social vulnerabilities as part of a comprehensive package of social protection support.…”

Possibilities and Pitfalls for Dealing with Large Longitudinal Qualitative Datasets

“…The programme includes an evaluation component and assesses what kinds of interventions are more effective in supporting adolescents to develop their full capabilities. For example, in Jordan, the programme evaluates the impacts of UNICEF’s Makani programme, which provides a wide range of education, child protection and life skills support to refugee and host community children and adolescents (Banati et al, 2021; Presler-Marshall et al, 2022).…”