Which strategies empower adolescent girls?

Following last week’s blog post by Robbie, the Coordinator for Wikichild on our joint online discussion focusing on “The impact of discriminatory social norms on adolescent girls”, I wanted to share some key emerging strategies that came out of this global conversation that took place between 2-11 April. The final report will be available next week on both Wikigender and Wikichild, but in the meantime here is a preview of what you can expect to read in more detail:

First of all, it is clear that adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable to a wide range of social norms, depending on the country, the areas (urban vs. rural) and the socio-economic condition of the family. Among discriminatory social norms, participants identified the following: early marriage, female genital mutilation (GFM), son bias, discriminatory inheritance practices, various forms of violence against girls and the practice of female exclusion or ‘purdah’. Such practices discriminate against girls in terms of their physical integrity, their personal freedom and their status, making them more vulnerable to shocks (financial or climate-related) and depriving them of the possibility to take their own decisions as to how they want to live their lives and how they can contribute to their community.

A number of interesting strategies for change were shared:

• Listen to the voices of adolescent girls and create spaces for peer support

• Change attitude through awareness campaigns

• Focus efforts on boys also

• Challenge violence against girls

• Target the gendered dimensions of well-being

• Link adolescent girls’ empowerment with broader development programmes

• Address multiple forms of disadvantage

• Engage with all sectors and all actors

Stay tuned on www.wikigender.org and http://www.wikiprogress.org/index.php/Child_well-being for the full report! We thank everyone who participated in this discussion by sharing their experience, ideas and best practices and look forward to presenting the outcome document at our expert workshop on “Empowering adolescent girls by tackling social norms” in London on 26 April.

Special thanks to our online discussion partners Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Research Network (HBSC), the Department for International Development (DFID UK), ASCD – The Whole Child, the Girl Hub, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Plan (UK) for participating and actively engaging their networks in this important discussion!

Feel free to reply to this post and share your ideas for future online discussions on our platforms.

Estelle Loiseau

Wikigender Coordinator

Children and the Post 2015 Agenda

As part of the Wikiprogress post-2015 series, this ProgBlog article by Robbie Lawrence provides an overview of the issues that children are still facing around the world, despite of the progress made by the Millennium Development Goals.

  

 “We stress our commitment to create a world fit for children, in which sustainable human development, taking into account the best interests of the child, is founded on principles of democracy, equality, non- discrimination, peace and social justice and the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness of all human rights, including the right to development.” 
United Nations Millennium Declaration (para 2), UN General Assembly, 2000.

During the last ten years, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have catalyzed considerable development in child well-being globally. The overarching vision of cutting the amount of extreme poverty worldwide by half by 2015, anchored in a series of specific goals, has received wide acclaim from governments and global organizations. In the last decade, the number of people suffering from extreme poverty fell from almost 2 billion to less than 1.3 billion, child mortality dropped to 6.9 million (it was 12 million in 1990) and huge improvements were made in school enrolment.

While progress has been made and aspects of the goals have been achieved, questions continue to be raised regarding the accuracy of positive praise for the MDGs. The subject of inequality for example, has become a centerpiece of the MDG skeptic’s argument, since positive poverty statistics have failed to address the unerring reality that striking imbalances between rich and poor, urban and rural areas, men and women and ethnic groups still remain.  

Over the course of the next month, Wikichild will post articles on three child related issues which policy makers and organizations have identified as a priority for the post-2015 agenda, namely: 

1. inequality
2. education and 
3. violence against children (particularly girls). 

There is already an extensive international debate on how the framework should take shape. Duncan Green, Oxfam’s Senior Strategic Adviser, has described the discussion as a veritable ‘Christmas tree’, decorated with a vast array of demands from a wide collection of NGOs that are together highly unachievable. Green’s own recommended strategy veers openly from the central stream of opinion, demanding data transparency and global league tables that expose those countries that fail to meet the requirements of the framework. Such pragmatic requests should certainly be considered alongside the overarching and potentially more abstract mandates that will make up the post-2015 document, and while we at Wikichild have chosen a number of specific topics to consider, they are by no means the only issues up for discussion.

Inequality

Following the release of Save the Children's Born Equal and vision for post-2015 reports, and the recent consultation led by UNICEF and UNWomen, the issue of inequality has become a central element in the discussion for a new framework. The problem of inequality is transcendent throughout the world and it seems paramount that while focus is still applied to the current MDGs, the next generation of these goals must accurately pursue global equity with their results reported transparently. Only by shifting attention to those who have not benefited from the MDG program will its aims be fully achieved.

Education

On the 5^th of December 2012, the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown launched a public event at the Brookings Centre for Universal Education that examined the progress made by the education-related MDGs. Speaking passionately about the recent shooting of Malala Yousafazi who was targeted for her support of girl’s education and the launch of Education First, Brown emphasized the need for greater coordination amongst the development community to reach the remaining 61 million children currently out of school and put pressure on the Post 2015 agenda to make education a top priority. Given the fast growing global youth population, the necessity to equip this group with the tools to gain vital skills for building prosperous, healthy and equitable societies is more pressing than ever, particularly when considering to the current state of the world’s economy.

Violence Against Children

Only yesterday, at the 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York, Michelle Bachelet stated:

 "Ending violence against women and girls is the missing Millennium Development Goal."

Whether it is systemised rape as a weapon of war, trafficking, forced and early marriages, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), sexual abuse in school and at work or domestic abuse, violence against children, particularly girls, has been a topic of intense discussion lately. Following the recent surge of campaigns including 1 Billion Rising and Girl Rising, there has been a collective demand for the widespread problem to be addressed.

In line with past online discussions, including last month’s Transforming social norms to prevent violence against women and girls, Wikigender and Wikichild will collaborate to host an online discussion in May on adolescent girls and social norms, which will include featured topics such as missing women and female genital mutilation. It is our hope that the reports synthesized from these discussions will add to the growing pressure on policy makers to address the issue of violence against children. If this problem is not dealt with, then progress towards equality, development and peace cannot be achieved. 

We at Wikichild hope you will find the articles relating to each of these topics informative and insightful. It is important to mention that the The OECD Global Forum on Development (GFD) is organising an online consultation* entitled “Reducing poverty is achievable: Finding those who are hidden by inequalities” on the Wikiprogress platform. Starting tomorrow, on Wednesday 6 March, you can post a comment in a few clicks by going to the “Contribute!” section of the online consultation page, so if you have an opinion, make sure your voice is heard. 

Robbie Lawrence 

Wikichild Coordinator 

@Wiki_child

What can the Social Institutions and Gender Index tell us about violence against women?

As part of the Wikiprogresson Gender Equality series, this progblog is brought to you by Somali Cerise.

Violence against women has been at the top of the media agenda in recent months following the shooting of a schoolgirl in Pakistan, an attack of a 22 year old woman in Delhi and a gang-rape and murder of a young woman in South Africa. The widespread protests that have followed these incidents show that governments must step up their efforts to stop violence against women and girls. The question is how?

A major challenge for developing effective policies to reduce violence against women is the lack of data and evidence about the nature of the problem and it implications. The OECD Development Centre latest Issues Paper, Transforming social institutions to prevent violence against women and girls, uses data from the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) to shed light on several dimensions of violence against women.

What do we know?  

First, laws are getting better, but we still have some way to go. The SIGI data for 2009 and 2012 shows that all regions have improved laws, however no country or region has a perfect score, indicating that some gaps in protection remain and the implementation of laws remains a challenge. In 2012, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region had the worst level of legal protection against violence against women, also showing the least improvement from 2009. Sub-Saharan Africa was in a similar position to MENA in 2009 but has shown greater improvement, although the region remained the second lowest ranked in 2012 after MENA. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) regions had the best scores for 2012, with EAP showing a marked improvement from 2009 to 2012.

Second, while better laws are an important step, laws alone will not reduce violence against women. Attitudes that normalize violence are deeply entrenched. On average, 60% of women in the MENA region believe that domestic violence is justified in certain circumstances. Moreover, the SIGI data shows that discriminatory attitudes are significantly related to the prevalence of domestic violence. There is a prevalence of domestic violence in countries where there is a high acceptance of domestic violence .

The relationship remains strong and significant even when taking into account the existence and quality of domestic violence laws and country income level. While laws are a necessary first step and foundation for combating violence against women, a greater focus on attitudes is needed to achieve a change in the level of violence.

Third, violence against women matters for development outcomes. The SIGI data shows that adolescent girls are twice as likely to be infected with HIV in countries where there is no domestic violence law (Figure 5) compared to similar rates in countries where there is a specific law. Further, we can see a positive and significant relationship between women’s physical integrity and child mortality. Countries with high levels of restrictions on women’s physical integrity also have high levels of infant mortality, even when controlling for factors including the fertility rate and country income level. This indicates that addressing violence against women is important for development.

So what can be done?

Governments should introduce a combination of measures including the implementation and enforcement of strong laws, public awareness, community mobilisation programmes, economic support for women and incentives. Check out the issues paper for some interesting examples. There is also a need for greater investment in evaluations to learn what works to prevent violence and in better data so that we have a better grasp of the problem.

*Don’t miss the Wikiprogress February 2013 eBrief, with a special focus on gender equality,  profiling articles, publications, blogs and much more on the subject. 

The voices of young women. Do you hear them?

As a part of the Wikiprogress on Gender Equality series, this progblog on empowering girls and young women is brought to you by Robbie Lawrence, Wikichild Coordinator. 

City Dump in Siem Reap - Courtesy of 10x10 

If you read our Spotlight! Gender Equality and Well-being posted last Friday you would have watched the trailer for ‘Girl Rising’, the feature film made by social action campaigners 10x10 which tells the story of nine girls from nine different walks of life, all seeking self empowerment through education.  The 10x10 team has set out to create a new form of social-issue moviemaking by combining production and advocacy right from the outset of the project’s fruition. The campaign, which brings together the intimacy and emotional thrust of its film with photos, videos, blogs and tweets is an exemplar of the dynamic methods in which organisations today seek to engage their audience. It also represents a ripple in a rapidly growing wave of protests around the world against the social, economic and political inequalities suffered by girls and young women. A wave that is likely to crash down on the impending Post 2015 agenda.

It was, perhaps, the attempt of a heavily male dominated institution to silence the voice of a young Pakistani girl that brought the issue of girl’s rights to the forefront of the Post 2015 discussion. When Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen as she returned home from school she immediately became an icon for voiceless and oppressed girls globally. By expressing her right to an education, Malala almost lost her life, but her attacker’s brutal actions only served to amplify her demands for equity in a transcendently male controlled world.  

Following the attempt on her life, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown launched a UN petition in Malala’s name demanding that children from every continent be in school by 2016 and last week hundreds of thousands of people mobilized to strike and dance for the One Billion Rising campaign in a bid to make her dream become a reality. When the Commission on the Status of Women convenes in New York next month, the weight of the ‘I am Malala’ campaign will undoubtedly weight heavily on the shoulders of the committee.

As the months leading up to the 2015 slip away, activists in favor of empowering girls and young women will hope that the fires ignited by the likes of ‘Girl Rising’ and ‘Malala’s Dream’ will not have cooled. In her recent article, ‘Young People and Inequalities: Recommendations for the post-2015 Development Agenda’, Sara Gold emphasizes the importance of forums like the UN’s ‘Global Online Conversation’, as it provides a platform for people to share their vision of a gender equal world.

We at Wikigender and Wikichild also plan on adding our voice to the global conversation on empowering young women, or should we say, your voice. In line with past online discussions, including this month’s ‘Transforming social norms to prevent violence against women and girls’, Wikigender and Wikichild will collaborate to host a forum on adolescent girls and social norms, which will include featured topics such as early marriage, missing women and female genital mutilation. By implementing a recognized location where information can be freely exchanged on topics like gender equality, it is our hope that over time, policy makers will use the reports formed from these discussions as points of reference. As Estelle pointed out in yesterday’s blog Rising against sexual violence! Wikigender will present the findings from their latest discussion at the 57^th CSW on the 4^th of March. 

Join us for our next online discussion in May on adolescent girls and the social norms getting in the way of their progress. We value your views and will keep you posted.

Robbie Lawrence 

Wikichild Coordinator

@Wiki_child, @Wikiprogress, @Wikigender