January 2020 GIL TOP POLICY LESSONS ON EMPOWERING GENDER INNOVATION LAB ADOLESCENT GIRLS The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) conducts impact evaluations of Adolescent girls face multiple challenges that restrict their horizons, often development interventions in having to make decisions about employment and their fertility at an early Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking to generate evidence on age, and with limited formal education opportunities. With lower levels of how to close gender gaps in education than men, girls are often less equipped for work. Additionally, a earnings, productivity, assets, plethora of expected domestic responsibilities limit their time for income- and agency. The GIL team is generating opportunities. currently working on over 60 impact evaluations in more A range of Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) studies across Sub-Saharan Africa than 20 countries with the aim of building an evidence base have demonstrated the potential of girls’ empowerment programs to change with lessons for the region. the life trajectories of young women even across a variety of contexts. These programs typically combine community-based girls clubs, life-skills training, The impact objective of GIL is increasing take-up of effective vocational training, and sometimes financial literacy and microcredit access, policies by governments, for young women. In addition to implementation in countries such as Uganda development organizations, and Tanzania, these programs have also helped create a buffer from conflict and the private sector for young women in South Sudan and during the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone to address the underlying causes of gender inequality in – showing that they are beneficial even across fragile contexts. Africa, particularly in terms of women’s economic and social empowerment. The Lab aims WHAT WORKS TO EMPOWER ADOLESCENT GIRLS? to do this by producing and delivering a new body of CREATING SAFE SPACES evidence and developing a Creating safe spaces for girls to receive job or life-skills trainings that are tailored compelling narrative, geared to an adolescent girl’s environment and experiences has been shown to be towards policymakers, on what works and what does effective across a variety of contexts. not work in promoting gender equality. http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab POLICY IN ACTION: SAFE SPACES IN UGANDA implementation. Quarantines were imposed which limited In Uganda, non-governmental organization BRAC travel, halted market activity, and closed schools. Health implemented a multifaceted program: Empowerment services were repurposed to fight the epidemic—and and Livelihoods for Adolescent Girls (ELA) created girl- medical services on sexual and reproductive health were only clubs, which became hubs for delivery of vocational severely reduced. In light of these circumstances, the and life-skills trainings. The program had positive impacts program was redesigned to understand if and how the on income and on girls’ decision-making power over ELA clubs might help safeguard adolescent girls in a childbearing, marriage, and sexual activity. Overall, girls in crisis environment. the ELA program were 26% less likely to have a child, 25% Working with village leaders, a World Bank team more likely to report always using a condom during sexual categorized communities into high- and low-disruption intercourse, and 44% less likely to have had sex against areas to determine how the crisis and the program might their will over the previous 12 months. Economically, they have impacted the resilience of girls in both types of were 72% more likely to be engaged in income-generating communities. Though the measures taken were critical activities, and reported self-employment earnings three to contain Ebola, they did have strong, negative effects times higher, compared to the original average1. At a cost on adolescent girls. In high-disruption communities with of under US$100 per girl per year, the program not only no ELA programming, younger girls were 16% less likely worked but also was cost-effective. Implementation of to return to schools after they were reopened, and spent the program in other contexts has shown the importance of high-quality execution for these results to be achieved. an average of 1.3 additional hours with men. Girls in the high-disruption communities were also more likely to become pregnant. POLICY IN ACTION: SAFE SPACES IN SIERRA LEONE After the successes in Uganda, a similar program was In contrast, the girls in the ELA program had different designed for Sierra Leone. However, Sierra Leone was outcomes. The school enrollment slump in high- hit with the 2014 Ebola epidemic during the program disruption communities was reduced by half if the girls Bandiera, Oriana; Buehren, Niklas; Burgess, Robin; Goldstein, Markus; Gulesci, Selim; Rasul, Imran; Sulaiman, Munshi. 2018. “Women’s Empowerment in Action : Evidence from a Ran- 1 domized Control Trial in Africa”. World Bank. were exposed to the clubs. In all types of communities, POLICY IN ACTION: REMOVING CONSTRAINTS IN both younger and older girls who participated in the clubs LIBERIA spent less time with men. In high-disruption communities, In Liberia, the Economic Empowerment of Adolescent pregnancies outside of wedlock also decreased by 7.5%. Girls and Young Women (EPAG) project offered a year-long In areas highly disrupted by the Ebola crisis, older girls employment program, including six months of trainings— reported increases in unwanted and transactional sex— which included socio-emotional skills, as well as either as younger girls enrolled in the ELA program spent less vocational or business skills training—and six months of time with men, it is likely that men shifted their attention follow-up support. Free childcare was provided during to older girls. However, the ELA program increased the classroom trainings—as well as savings accounts, a the ability of older girls to mitigate some of the risks stipend for transportation, and a completion bonus. The associated with transactional sex. They were more program was geared toward young women, between the likely to use contraceptives and there were no resulting ages of 16 to 27, who had been out of school for at least a increases in pregnancy rates2. year. Compared to non-participants, young women in the program had strongly positive employment and earnings outcomes: employment increased by 47%, and earnings TAKING BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATION INTO ACCOUNT increased by 80%. Along with the economic outcomes, participants gained other elements of empowerment: Careful program design that is tailored to the specific access to money, self-confidence, and anxiety about needs of adolescent girls is critical to keep in mind for circumstances and the future were positively impacted3. programs targeting young women. Indeed, trainings for young women that take the constraints that may restrict girls from attending the sessions into account MENTORING PROGRAMS have been demonstrated to be effective. For example, Mentors can play a positive role in girls’ lives, helping these might include free child care or transportation that them to transition into adolescence and adulthood, adopt allows women with children, or limited means, to attend. healthy behaviors, build confidence and self-esteem, and Alibhai, Salman; Buehren, Niklas; Frese, Michael; Goldstein, Markus; Papineni, Sreelakshmi; Wolf, Kathrin. 2019. “Full Esteem Ahead? Mindset-Oriented Business Training in Ethiopia”. Policy 2 Research Working Paper;No. 8892. World Bank. Adoho, Franck; Chakravarty, Shubha; Korkoyah, Jr, Dala T.; Lundberg, Mattias; Tasneem, Afia. 2014. “The impact of an adolescent girls employment program : the EPAG project in Liberia”. 3 World Bank. navigate decisions about schooling, employment, and fertility. At critical junctures in girls’ development, mentors can help to nudge them in positive directions. POLICY IN ACTION: MENTORING PROGRAMS IN LIBERIA The Sisters of Success (SOS) program in Liberia harnessed the power of mentorship: creating a program in which mentors and girls’ groups delivered life skills trainings—social and emotional skills—to young adolescent girls, between the age of 12-15. Compared to girls who did not receive the program, girls in the mentorship program were 4% more likely to have completed primary school and 3% more likely to have enrolled in secondary school (Koroknay-Palicz and IRC, 2016). In addition to the boost in school enrollment, girls in the clubs improved the quality of their relationships with both their peers and their parents. The younger girls, between ages 12 and 13, had more concentrated impacts— indicating that policies for girls in fragile environments can indeed be effective at younger ages. SCALING UP PROGRAMS THAT WORK The results from the ELA and EPAG interventions informed the design of the Sahel Women Empowerment and Demographic Dividend Regional (SWEDD). Since the early design stage of the project, GIL joined the SWEDD Project team to provide technical assistance on the design of the interventions based on GIL’s own and other rigorous global evidence of adolescent girls’ projects. Notably, GIL influenced the design of several innovations that were included in the project, including the development of safe spaces curricula based on international best- practice and the introduction of boys’ clubs in addition to girls’ clubs in three of the six target countries. Similarly, these findings influenced the World Bank- Tejaswini project in India which uses safe spaces as a platform to offer a package of activities for girls aged 14 to 24, including community-based social support, life skills (including reproductive health), business skills and vocational training. The project will reach 680,000 girls over 5 years. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Kenny Ajayi kajayi@worldbank.org Fannie Delavelle fdelavelle@worldbank.org 1818 H St NW Washington, DC 20433 USA This work has been funded in part by the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), which is a multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through experimentation and www.worldbank.org/africa/gil knowledge creation to help governments and the private sector focus policy and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.