‘Sticky’ Norms and Coping Strategies: Lessons from the Girls’ Education Challenge Fund

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: The ALIGN Platform panel: shifting gender norms through education

Proposal

The Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) is a £355 million fund launched in 2012 to improve girls’ education across 38 projects and 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, including in fragile and conflict-affected states such as Afghanistan and Somalia. As the Evaluation Manager of the GEC, we were able to draw lessons from our research and evaluation work about gender norms and their effects on girls’ education across a wide range of programme contexts.
We undertook this study on behalf of ALIGN: a digital platform advancing knowledge exchange on gender norm change, including in education. Our research focused on how and to what extent changes in gender norms led to improved education outcomes for girls targeted by GEC projects between 2012 and 2017.
Gender norms – such as the expectation of girls to marry early and be responsible for household chores – are widely understood as being among the most significant barriers to girls’ accessing a quality education in low and middle-income countries. Less is known, however, about the impact of gender norms on girls’ learning outcomes and the effectiveness of interventions seeking to address these. We will present lessons from a wide range of interventions and contexts that contribute to a growing body of evidence on what works in changing gender norms in education.
We base our findings on our evaluation of 21 GEC projects that sought to address gender norms through their project interventions at the community, household, school and individual levels. These interventions include, for example, organising community workshops, delivering teacher training, and targeting parents through PTA meetings. We have examined evidence produced throughout the life of the GEC, including baseline, midline, and endline evaluation reports, complemented with further analysis of primary data collected by projects.
We found that most gender norms targeted by GEC projects did not change. Certain gender norms, like housework and early marriage, were particularly ‘sticky’ – or enduring - with evidence of projects working around a norm to reduce its impact on girls’ education rather than changing the norm itself. Even where projects reported some success in shifting gender norms, they struggled to change educational outcomes, especially learning. Nevertheless, there is encouraging evidence about the role of teachers suggesting that reducing teachers’ negative attitudes towards girls, especially through training in gender-sensitive pedagogy, might lead to improvements in learning.
By sharing insights from our research and engaging in dialogue with other participants, we will contribute to establishing a set of ‘good practice’ activities and interventions to target gender norms that prevent girls from attending and learning in school. Gathering and disseminating evidence from a wide range of contexts is crucial in the design of education programming, and ultimately in ensuring sustainable improvements in learning outcomes.

Author

• Sophie Amili, Coffey Evaluation and Research Consultant