Listening to Girls’ Voices: the Intersections of Education and Empowerment

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Education can be a powerful force to promote gender equality and social justice, and the full and equal participation of women and girls in public life. However, unless an explicit decision is taken to challenge inequality, schools and their related systems and networks may simply reinforce existing social norms and power structures. How is the global education community tackling this challenge?

Within Save the Children’s gender equality and social justice approach, one strand is to focus on girls’ empowerment in and through education. However, empowerment is a difficult concept to communicate- it is a process and an outcome; it is personal and political; and the feeling of “being empowered” can look completely different from person to person. It is widely recognized that girls’ education can make a significant contribution to girls’ empowerment, but the concept of empowerment itself is increasingly under scrutiny, often critiqued for being co-opted or depoliticized. Do we know what girls themselves think, and what they want?

This panel will also explore questions such as: Does access to education inherently lead to girls’ empowerment? What are the factors (such as poor learning outcomes, or lack of conceptual clarity of “empowerment”) that complicate this connection? Contributors from across the Save the Children International movement will contribute to this panel, exploring the concept of empowerment and its relationship with education– framing it within Save the Children’s Girls Education Toolkit, introducing the ‘Girls’ Power Index’, and sharing evidence and lessons learned, including new evidence from girls themselves.

SC has conducted both quantitative and qualitative data collection on the topic of education and girls’ empowerment. Quantitative data collection has been grounded in the Girls’ Power Index, a tool that examines and tries to understand empowerment through four key dimensions:

-Power to: Girls’ ability to make choices around education and their access and control of resources, such as books, school materials, and time to study and go to school

-Power within: Girls’ sense of self-confidence and self-worth, as well as the skills and ability to take action to pursue education and learning, and protect their right to safe, quality education

-Power with: Girls’ access to support and positive relationships enabling the pursuit of education and learning

-Power in: Girls’ perceptions of the degree to which the education environment is gender-responsive and safe

This framing of empowerment through the four key dimensions of Power To, Power Within, Power With, and Power In will help to frame the research and new evidence that will be explored throughout the panel discussions.

This panel will present and discuss the Girls’ Power Index, new qualitative research findings about girls’ voices on empowerment, and what this can tell us about the linkages between education and empowerment. The Girls’ Power Index is not only useful to support the measurement of programmatic indicators but can also facilitate discussions and critiques of socio-cultural norms around education and helps us understand what empowerment means to girls themselves. Based on the framework of the Girls’ Power Index, and using participatory and adolescent-friendly methodologies, SC collected data from Global Affairs Canada-funded projects in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Nigeria on girls’ expressions and experiences of the different concepts of power, empowerment and education, the main barriers and hindering factors for girls’ empowerment; and the enabling factors which work to facilitate girls’ feelings of empowerment. Initial findings to be explored through this panel indicate that many girls have a clear personal concept of empowerment and identify the importance of education for their personal growth, success, and independence. However, while they understand the concept of empowerment, they do not feel empowered or describe themselves as such. Most identified a considerable number of contextual, socio-cultural, and economic barriers that hindered their education.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Catherine Kennedy, Save the Children US

Individual Presentations

• Power Within: Girls' Clubs - Argentina Sansone, Save the Children

• Power In: Teacher Engagement - Rogers Tumusiime, Save The Children International