Challenging the Narratives for Equal Educational Opportunities: Adolescent Mothers and Pregnant Girls in Local Advocacy

• In Event: Voice, Agency and Education

Proposal

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest regional rate of adolescent pregnancy in the world (World Bank, 2022). Despite a decline from 154 births per 1,000 adolescents in 1960 to 100 births in 2019, the adolescent fertility rate in Sub-Saharan Africa remains the highest of all the regions, more than twice as high as the global average of 42 births per 1,000 adolescents (World Bank, 2022).

Adolescent pregnancy violates the rights of girls, severely curtailing their opportunity and their ability to reach their full potential, with huge psycho-social, economic and health consequences. Adolescent pregnancy and childbearing are also major impediments to the achievement of the global goal of eliminating gender disparity at all levels of education by 2030, particularly among children in vulnerable contexts. While understanding of adolescent pregnancy and parenting has expanded over the years, bringing with it a heightened sense of urgency in tackling the issue, the legal and policy environment that enables the return of pregnant girls and adolescent mothers to formal schooling and / other transition pathways are not robust enough in many countries.

In Zimbabwe, where one out of three women are married and one out of four give birth before the age of eighteen resulting in many girls being forced to drop out of school, headways have been made in efforts to create opportunities for access to education through policy and legislation. Following the ratification of global and regional treaties such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the African Charter on the Rights of the Welfare of the Child, efforts to domesticate these in local legislation have been persistent. This has resulted in a clear commitment to the right to education in the Constitution (Amendment Number 20 of 2013), along with various statutory policy instruments and more importantly, the Education Amendment Act 2020 (Section 68C) which states that: ‘No pupil shall be excluded from school for non-payment of school fees or on the basis of pregnancy’. However, while these policy instruments are important measures in democratising formal schooling for pregnant/ parenting girls, this alone is inadequate to confront the various structural barriers that prevent them from returning to/ completing formal school system or accessing alternative educational pathways.

Academic and policy literature on adolescent pregnancy/ parenting often views it as an individual issue and (or) a social problem that needs solving (Macleod, 2014). While viewing it as an individual or social problem may facilitate policy discussions and professional interventions to address causes and consequences of adolescent pregnancy, it often confirms the taken-for-granted assumptions about adolescent mothers and pregnant mothers in communities and does not help unpick and draw out the gender, class, and raced relations that underpin many of these assumptions (Macleod, 2014). Often, adolescent mothers and pregnant girls are invisibilised and/ silenced in communities that these common depictions and abstractions go unquestioned and remain unchallenged.

This presentation will draw on experiences and evidence from a project that brings together local, national, and transnational actors for positive change in girls’ education by challenging the policy and practice barriers for education for pregnant girls and adolescent mothers. The presentation will particularly focus on the role of advocacy and collective action of pregnant girls and adolescent mothers through girls-led forums, social accountability approaches and community dialogues through which the girls constructively engaged with local government, faith leaders and community stakeholders to challenge the religious, cultural, and attitudinal barriers that prevent pregnant girls and adolescent mothers from accessing equal educational opportunities. The paper will argue that while some of these spaces of ‘protest’ at the community level may have contributed to their capacity to express their voice and agency, and challenge and at times, help reinterpret the dominant narratives about them, they also reveal the complexities of protest in these spaces. Schools and communities are still ‘gendered sites of power’ (Cin, 2017) that continue to impose traditional gender norms, power relations and inequalities. The presentation will also share our challenges in taking local advocacy efforts forward to national and transnational levels, and the lessons learned from the fights of pregnant girls and adolescent mothers for equitable educational opportunities.

Keywords: Advocacy, Africa, Community, Equity, Improvement, Inclusion, Marginalized Groups.

Authors

• Memory Sibanda, World Vision

• Wadzanayi Evelyn Chitiga, Education Coalition of Zimbabwe

• Maria Sitera Rowayi Tokwani, World Vision Zimbabwe

• Trustmore Koke, World Vision

• Nisha Thomas, World Vision UK