In a series of blogs for International Women’s Day, four Young Lives researchers describe what we are finding out about girls’ life chances and experiences during adolescence.
- From India, Renu Singh explores why girls are less likely to complete secondary school than boys, and argues for an extension of the right to education beyond 14 years.
- Many children begin paid and unpaid work well before they reach adulthood. Gina Crivello shares new evidence from Young Lives on girls’ unpaid care and gendered changes in time-use patterns across childhood and into early adulthood.
- Alan Sanchez reports from Peru on the predictors of teenage pregnancy, and the implications for policy on social protection, education and sexual and reproductive rights.
- The position of married adolescent girls deserves greater policy attention. Based on her new working paper, Young Lives Ethiopia researcher Nardos Chuta describes how life changed after marriage for Haymanot and Sessen, two young women who have been taking part in Young Lives’ qualitative longitudinal research since they were young girls.
Across very different social and economic contexts, Young Lives’ evidence has shown that by the start of adult life, girls’ and boys’ aspirations, education and responsibilities have already been profoundly shaped by poverty, gender and the place where they grew up. Action to promote women’s economic empowerment needs to start with attention to gender and poverty inequalities in childhood.