The Issues Behind Girl Empowerment in Teenage Pregnancy: The Case of Sierra Leone

Abstract

This article takes Sierra Leone as an example to analyze the problems of teenage empowerment discourse in addressing teenage pregnancy. By lacking sufficient outside help, girls are likely to be trapped in a situation where they are informed but powerless to change the status quo due to structural inequalities in the environment. They are even trapped in more pain because of the prevalence of girl empowerment. This paper argues that this dilemma is an existing staged problem, and womens empowerment needs to change from thinking to more targeted social support to reduce the gap. This paper proposes strategies to improve womens educational attainment as possible support directions. Since Sierra Leone is a typical low-income country, this article has reference value for the similar plight of other low- and middle-income countries.