2011/ED/EFA/MRT/PI/01
Background paper prepared for the
Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2011
The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education
Translating education gains into labor force gains
for young women; alternative education strategies
Cynthia B. Lloyd
2010
This paper was commissioned by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report as background
information to assist in drafting the 2011 report. It has not been edited by the team. The views and
opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the EFA
Global Monitoring Report or to UNESCO. The papers can be cited with the following reference:
“Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011, The hidden crisis: Armed conflict
and education”. For further information, please contact [email protected].
Translating education gains into labor force gains for young women;
alternative education strategies
Cynthia B. Lloyd
Introduction and Background
“For education to promote gender equality, .., it must benefit women equally if not
more than men, given the history of discrimination against women and girls in
schooling” (Aslam, Kingdon and Soderbom 2008)
Probably the most dramatic social and economic transformation that has occurred in
developed countries over the past 40 years has been the rapid rise in women’s labor force
participation, including a shift in the locus of women’s activities from home to public spaces
(Blau 1997; Goldin, 1990). These changes have led to a growth in family income and at the
same time to greater agency and independence for women. In this paper, I focus on the role
of the school in supporting a similar transition in developing countries – a transition which is
not only necessary to support women’s quest for greater autonomy and influence but also to
support rapid economic growth.
Gender gaps in school participation rates have been closing worldwide with some of the most
dramatic changes in the poorest countries. Indeed, in many cases, gender gaps are even
reversing to favor girls at all levels. While gender gaps in labor force participation have been
narrowing as well, the rate of change has been much slower suggesting that other forces are
at work to limit the extent to which young women have been able to translate education gains
into gains in work force participation. There are 3 major sets of factors which may be
limiting the pace of young women’s growth in economic participation: (1) social norms about
the role of women in economic life, (2) the content and “relevance” of contemporary
education and (3) characteristics of the job market affecting the demand for female workers.
The first two sets of factors can be influenced by the education system while the third set of
factors operates largely outside the education system.
The socialization of children with respect to appropriate adult roles for men and women starts
within the family and community and continues within the school. It is modeled on the norms
and values of parents, community leaders and teachers as colored by their life experiences.
“The traditional division of labor between the sexes - which has been reinforced over the
generations through this socialization process - stems from a universal concern with the
protection, feeding and rearing of the young and a recognition of the importance of
maintaining physical proximity between mother and child (NRC/IOM 2005:266).” With the
evolution of a cash economy, this traditional division of labor is reflected in the feminization
of jobs that mirror women’s traditional domestic functions within the home as care givers and
domestic workers. Nursing and garment work would be two examples. Education can play a
role in the socialization process either by reinforcing traditional gender roles or by modeling
alternative gender roles within the classroom as well as through the curriculum and teaching
materials.
The content and “relevance” of education, capturing the second set of factors affecting
women’s labor force growth, influences the match between the specific knowledge and skills
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acquired in school and available jobs. Those whose education provides them with a better
match will be in a more competitive position in the job market.
Occupational segregation by gender, capturing the third set of factors affecting the labor force
growth of young women, is pervasive in the labor market in every country. To some extent
this universal reality reflects gender differences in work preferences as influenced by social
norms and practical family circumstances and to some extent this reflects discrimination by
employers on the basis of gender. Discriminatory behavior is also a product of the social
norms about sex roles discussed above, leading employers to be reluctant to employ women
in non-traditional jobs. Furthermore, employers may perceive that hiring women is more
expensive or more risky because of women’s traditional childcare responsibilities. With
economic growth as well as structural change in labor markets, the relative demand for
female workers can shift in either a positive or negative direction depending on the relative
importance of various occupations in overall job growth. Standing (1999) suggests that the
labor force is in fact becoming more “feminine” in its characteristics as a result of the
changing nature of work in response to global shifts in demand. Thus, it would appear that
the rise in the demand for work in occupations that are traditionally female has been a
positive factor encouraging the growth of employment among young women.
Of particular note in today’s poorer countries is the fact that the economic returns to formal
education in form of wages appear to be high relative to the West and slightly higher overall
for women than men (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 2004). While, men appear to gain more
than women when they make the transition from no education to primary completion, the
reverse is true for the transition from primary completion to secondary completion where
women’s gain in wages exceeds men’s. While both young men and women experience a
sizeable gain in earnings with secondary school completion, young women appear to have
even more to gain by completing secondary school than do young men. For example, recent
analysis of the 2007 labor force survey in the Philippines has identified formal education as
the single most important factor contributing to individual wage differentials, accounting for
a higher percentage of the difference among female workers (37 percent) than male workers
(24 percent) (Luo and Terada 2009). The wage premiums for the completion of secondary
and tertiary levels of education are higher for women than for men. This could partially be
explained by the distribution of types of jobs according to education level as well as by lesser
gender discrimination in jobs requiring secondary school completion. In some cases, even
some secondary schooling can make a difference. In Bangladesh, recent data suggest that a
key factor in the growth of real wages from 2000 to 2005, particularly for women, has been
the rising percent of employees with some secondary schooling (Al-Samarrai 2007).
Furthermore, global trends seem to be contributing to higher and rising rates of return to
secondary and tertiary education relative to the past (Luo and Terada 2009; NRC/IOM 2005).
Many factors may be at work here including a shift in the overall distribution of educational
attainment, a changing global economic climate due to market liberalization and growth in
international trade as well as possible declines in educational quality at the primary level due
to the rapid expansion of primary schooling in response to Education for All. What is clear is
that for girls, the economic advantage of schooling will increasingly be reaped only with the
completion of secondary school while boys may still see some economic opportunities
opening up for them with only primary schooling. A recent analysis of the 1998-99 Integrated
Household survey in Pakistan illustrates the point. It is only after at least 10 years of school
(matric level) that women begin to take advantage of the benefits of education by joining the
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formal labor force and entering wage employment while men participate in the labor force at
all levels of education (Aslam, Kingdon and Soderbom 2008).
Interestingly, almost no research has tried to compare the rates of returns from completion of
general secondary school to the returns from vocational secondary school. Despite high per
pupil costs and increasing questions about their effectiveness, most countries still retain a
vocational secondary school track (World Bank 2005). Typically, it is the students who do
less well on their primary school leaving exams who are tracked into government technical or
vocational schools. The curriculum in general secondary schools is geared to prepare students
for university and is often highly abstract and academic. Nonetheless, vocational or technical
secondary school is often perceived to be “inferior” (Benavot and Resnick 2006, 186).
Typically the majors chosen by men and women in vocational secondary school differ,
reflecting social norms about gender roles as discussed above. For example, in Indonesia, 64
percent of men in vocational secondary choose a technical or industrial major while women
choose business management (56 percent) and tourism (29 percent) (Newhouse and
Suryadarma 2009). In Indonesia, female graduates of vocational secondary schools appear to
have a slight wage premium relative to female graduates of general secondary schools. A
comparison of birth cohorts suggests a dramatic decline in the wage premium traditionally
associated with vocational education for young men in Indonesia. At the same time, there has
been a substantial rise in women’s vocational wage premium by age 30. These shifts could be
explained by the increasing prominence of the service sector in Indonesia where the demand
for business management and tourism skills is strong. In the context of Indonesia, rapid
changes in the economy in response to global demand is creating a favorable environment for
female graduates of vocational secondary school.
None of these overall estimates of rates of return take account of returns to school quality.
However, evidence suggests that school quality is critically important in translating additional
years of education into labor market gains. Research suggests that dropout rates are higher in
schools with poorer learning outcomes (Hanushek et al 2008); that better learning outcomes
translate into more rapid transitions to a job after secondary school completion in settings
with high rates of unemployment (e.g. Lam, Leibrandt and Mlatsheni 2009 for South Africa )
and ultimately to higher earnings (Hanushek 2006). The relevance of the skills acquired in
school for labor market needs may also be a factor affecting rates for return to schooling. For
example, evidence suggests that a secondary school graduate with fluency in an international
language can expect to earn considerably more than a graduate with fluency in a local
language (Lloyd and Young 2009). Recent qualitative research on the literacy environment
in Senegal reflects the popular perception that access to employment in the formal sector of
the economy requires literacy in French (Shiohata 2010).
Gender Differences in School and Work Transitions
Figures 1a contrasts school attendance rates by age and sex among youth ages 12-16 and 1721 with labor force participation rates (Figure 1b) at these same ages for five major regions
(sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and
the Caribbean and South Asia) based on aggregated and weighted data from World Bank
Living Standard Surveys conducted between 1995-2004 (Buvinic et al. 2007). As expected,
we see in every region that school attendance declines with age during adolescence and labor
force participation rises.
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Three regions - Latin America, East Asia and the Pacific and Europe and Central Asia – show
high rates of school attendance for both boys and girls among 12-16 year-olds as well as
similar patterns of school departure by age. By contrast in each of these regions, overall
levels of labor force participation are much lower for girls than boys, with the gap widening
with age among youth. In South Asia, girls at every age have slightly lower school
attendance rates than boys. Gender gaps in labor force participation are much wider than in
the previously mentioned three regions and even exceed gaps in all the other regions. While
gender gaps do not appear prominent in sub-Saharan Africa in labor force participation
relative to the other regions, overall levels of participation among older adolescents remains
low. While more young men than young women remain in school at older ages in subSaharan Africa, women’s participation in the labor market is the same as young men at less
than 40% - the lowest level among all the regions. It remains to be seen whether young
women can capitalize on their education in Sub-Saharan Africa as educational attainment
increases.
There is some evidence published elsewhere to suggest that the gender gap between young
men and women in labor force participation has been narrowing in developing countries with
rising labor force participation among young women. Nonetheless, gender gaps in labor force
participation rates still remain large in most countries (NRC/IOM 2005).
While the data in Figure 1a show us a rough profile of school attendance by age, we cannot
see what that implies about educational attainment, in particular transitions to secondary
school as well as secondary school completion. This is because many students in poor
countries are over-age for their grade. Therefore the age at which they leave school cannot be
immediately translated into the last grade attended. In the introduction, we drew attention to
the particular importance of secondary school enrollment and, most importantly, secondary
school completion, for adolescent girls in terms of future economic returns, so it would
appear that it would be even more important for them than for boys to enter secondary school
and ideally earn a secondary school degree if they are to overcome their historical
disadvantage in the workplace.
In the past 10-15 years, there has been an impressive improvement in the extent to which
both 16-18 year old boys and girls who start school complete primary and transition into
secondary school, with girls’ progress typically surpassing boys (Grant and Behrman 2010).
Focusing first on the most recent situation, we can see in Figure 2a that secondary transition
rates for the ever enrolled vary widely with rates for boys as low as 10 to 12 percent in
Rwanda and Tanzania and as high as 97 percent in Jordan. The range of rates is similar for
girls. There is diversity both within and across regions with the lowest rates in Eastern and
Southern Africa where there has been dramatic progress in universalizing education but little
progress in rates of transition to secondary school. By contrast, in Western and Central
Africa, which has among the highest rates of never-enrollment, transition rates among the
more selective adolescents who have entered school are typically much higher.
Figure 2b shows trends in the gender gap in progression to secondary school among the ever
enrolled over this same time period for 38 countries with at least two surveys, one in the early
1990s and one in the early part of the 2000s (Grant and Behrman 2010). The blue bar shows
the gender gap that existed in the 1990s while the red bar show the gender gap more recently.
It is striking to note that, by the date of the latest survey, a majority of countries (21 of the 38)
have no gender gap or a negative gender gaps indicating that girls have caught up with and, in
4
18 countries, are now surpassing boys in their progression rates to secondary school. These
findings may reflect a response to the relative rise in rates of return to secondary schooling
for girls. Indeed, in only 6 countries did gender gaps widen over the decade but in all but one
of these cases, the gaps remained negative and thus continue to favor girls. West and Central
Africa countries stand out as having the widest gender gaps. Turkey is also a stand out case
with a recent gap of over 20 percentage points; this reflects substantial improvement over the
past 10 years.
It should be noted, however, that calculated rates of return referred to above are predicated
not on secondary school enrollment but secondary school completion. Thus what is of most
fundamental interest is the percent of all young people who actually complete secondary
school. In Figure 3a, we show the percent that have completed secondary school for both men
and women at ages 22-24 as a percent of that age group for 46 countries with Demographic
and Health Surveys since 2003. Here we can see that the rates are much lower than shown in
the previous figure for two reasons: (1) we are looking not just at secondary progress but
secondary completion and (2) this is based on all individuals in the age group not just those
who had attended school. Again we see diversity within and across regions with secondary
completion rates of less than 10 percent in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Completion rates are
greater than 50 percent for both genders in Azerbaijan, Colombia, Jordan, the Philippines and
Ukraine as well as in Bolivia and Nigeria for boys and the Dominican Republic for girls.
The gender gap in overall secondary completion rates favors young men in most cases (37
out of 46 countries) with Armenia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Jordan,
Madagascar, Namibia, the Philippines and Ukraine being the exceptions (see Figure 3b).
Given that we know that girls progress more rapidly than boys once enrolled (Grant and
Behrman 2010; Lam,Leibbrandt and Mlatsheni 2009), the gender gap in secondary
completion rates, where it occurs, can primarily be explained by the persistent gender gap in
ever enrollment. Thus, while we see the incredible progress that girls have made, we also see
how much more progress will be required if a majority of girls (and boys) are to complete
secondary school.
Alternative educational strategies for improving adolescent girls’ transition to work
A growing recognition of the challenges facing young women in a rapidly globalizing
environment has led governments and NGOs to invest in a variety of different approaches,
some within the formal educational system and some outside, to address young women’s
growing aspirations and need for remunerative work. Given adolescent girls’ diverse
circumstances, educational programs need to serve two very different populations of girls:
those who have either never attended or dropped out before adolescence and need an
accelerated compensatory education to support their transition to work and those who are still
in school and need support to continue on to secondary school where many of the full
benefits of education can be reaped.
Non-formal educational programs for adolescent girls who have been left behind
Many NGOs and some governments have developed non-formal educational alternatives for
adolescent girls who have either missed out on school all together or dropped out of formal
schooling prior to becoming literate or completing primary school. The intent of these
programs is not to help girls track back into the formal system but instead to provide a fast5
track compensatory educational alternative with the goal of providing marketable skills,
including literacy. Nearly a quarter of all the programs documented in the global
compendium on educational programs for adolescent girls offer non-formal educational
alternatives (Lloyd and Young 2009). Furthermore, a large majority (over 70 percent) of all
educational programs for adolescent girls that have a livelihood or vocational component as
documented in Lloyd and Young’s program compendium were found in non-formal
alternative educational programs (see Table 1).
Some governments have integrated non-formal education within their larger education
system; in many countries, however, non-formal education is largely operated by NGOs
outside the regular government system. The Centres Education par Development (CEDs) in
Mali would be an example of a non-formal education program that was established by the
government to address the needs of girls who had never been to school. In collaboration with
the INGO, CARE, the current program runs for 3 years with 2 years focused on the
academics (e.g. reading in local language and arithmetic) and one year spent in a vocational
training program (Lloyd and Young 2009).
Many times such programs are developed to target the needs of children and adolescents who
have missed out on school because of war and conflict, having spent part of their childhood
as a refugee or an IDP. The Youth Education Pack (YEP) is a program developed by the
Norwegian Refugee Council to address the needs of older adolescents in conflict-affected
settings who are too old to reenter school or even attend an accelerated non-formal school.
YEP is a one year full time program with 3 components: literacy/numeracy, life skills and
vocational skills training. Priority is given to single mothers, youth heads of household and
those with the poorest educational background. Vocational skills training activities are based
on a market assessment of needs in each community. YEP is currently operational in
Burundi, DR Congo, Georgia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Somaliland, Sudan and Uganda.
Their project in Burundi has been subject to an external evaluation (Ketel 2008).
Unfortunately, a feature of the program’s design requiring participants to join a post-training
cooperative compromised the evaluation’s assessment of the impact of the program. Many of
these cooperatives, intended to provide trainees with marketing support as well as protection
and solidarity in their areas of specialty, were not longer operational at the time of the
evaluation. As a result, the evaluator was unable to contact many of the trainees for follow-up
interviews. On the positive side, the evaluation indicated that the particular skills for which
training were provided were well chosen in relation to market demand.
No data are currently available which document that extent to which adolescent girls are
covered by these programs but a variety of sources suggest that enrollment in these programs
may be considerable (Lloyd and Young 2009). Current data on educational enrollment,
whether it is based on management information systems or on sample surveys, do not include
enrollment in non-formal educational programs. There are probably two reasons for this: (1)
it is a relatively new phenomena and (2) it is hard to ask questions about educational
participation without reference to grades and levels. Unfortunately none of these programs
has been effectively evaluated for impact either in terms of learning outcomes or in terms of
transitions to employment. As a result, there is no basis on which to judge the effectiveness
of these programs in the supporting young women’s learning outcomes or transitions to
remunerative work.
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Educational programs to support girls to continue in formal school during adolescence
The first and most direct approach has involved the provision of various cash or in-kind
subsidies to reduce the considerable costs associated with attending formal secondary school
and to expand the supply of formal secondary schools. This approach is intended to increase
demand for education and does not attempt to address issues of school quality at the level of
the educational system, the individual school or the classroom. This approach is well justified
by the impressive economic returns to formal schooling, which have been well documented,
and by the immediate financial constraints facing many poor families. A second approach,
which can be pursued in conjunction with the first approach, has been to create a more
supportive and girl-friendly atmosphere within the school, through the recruitment and
training of female teachers, gender training for teachers, after-school programs including
mentoring and tutoring support which are all geared to the development of a more protective
and, at the same time, more empowering educational environment for girls.1 A third
approach, which again can be complementary with the previous approaches, has been to work
directly within the formal school system to develop a more “relevant” curriculum; including
the teaching of life skills and more general marketable skills, such as science and math,
computer literacy and fluency in an internationally spoken language. The word “relevance”
is used to convey the idea that curricular content should be responsive to market demand and
teach skills that can be remunerative. The latter two approaches, whether implemented
separately or in combination with each other or in combination with the first approach,
appear promising but have not yet been tested using the same scientific rigor as the first
approach. Both of these approaches involve addressing various dimensions of school quality
that are expected to have beneficial effects on educational outcomes.
The provision of financial incentives: In a compendium of educational programs serving
adolescent girls, Lloyd and Young (2009) documented 322 programs which were operational
in 2009. Forty three percent of these programs provided adolescent girls with cash or in-kind
contributions to attend school, sometimes primary school and sometimes secondary school.
This broad approach has proven successful in boosting girls’ enrollment in a range of settings
as documented through randomized or quasi-experimental impact evaluations. However,
issues of targeting and cost-effectiveness remain (Lloyd and Young 2009). The best known
of these programs is the secondary school scholarship program for girls in Bangladesh that
has led to reversal of the gender gap at the secondary level in Bangladesh. The rapid
expansion of girls’ enrollment at the secondary level might not have been possible without
the modernizing reform of the madrasa schools allowing the teaching of secular subjects
which led to a rapid growth in female enrollment in government recognized madrasas
(Asadullah and Chaudhury 2008). Whether attendance at “reformed” madrasas will hold the
same economic benefits for girls as more traditional government formal secondary schools is
not yet known.
Other more recent examples of girls’ only scholarship schemes include the girls’ scholarship
program in Cambodia supported by the Japanese to support poor girls in completing the last
grade of primary school (Filmer and Schady 2008), the female school stipend program
supported by the World Bank in Pakistan to encourage girls’ enrollment in government
middle schools (grades 6 to 8) (Chaudhury and Parajuli 2006) and the very recent cash
transfer program targeted to 13-22 year old never-married girls in Malawi (Baird, McIntosh
1
Elements of this approach are also relevant to non-formal education programs for girls
7
and Ozler 2010). Typically, these programs are conditional on girls maintaining certain
attendance or performance standards in school. In all cases, these programs appear to have
their strongest positive effects by increasing girls’ chances of making the transition from
primary to secondary school and/or encouraging secondary school attendance. None of these
programs has shown any beneficial effects on learning outcomes (Baird, McIntosh and Ozler
2010).
Conditional cash transfer programs got their start in Latin America with the well-known
Progresa, now Opportunidades, program. These programs, first introduced in Mexico 1997,
have been an innovative approach to addressing long-run poverty through monthly cash
grants to poor mothers conditional on their children’s attendance at health clinics and at
school. Rawlings and Rubio (2005) review experiences with these programs in Colombia and
Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Turkey and find that all have been effective in
raising enrollment but only in Mexico were girls differentially targeted with more generous
grants designed to overcome an historical gender gap in secondary school enrollment. Evans
and Ghosh (2008) in their review of a range of well-designed educational interventions, warn
that, in terms of per capita costs, conditional cash transfer programs are relatively expensive.
Furthermore, alternative approaches, including teacher training and the provision of teaching
materials, have been more effective in improving knowledge and skills.
The general consensus from the Latin American experience has been that, to be effective in
raising school enrollment and attendance, these grants need to be conditional (de Brauw and
Hoddinott 2008). Recent evidence from Malawi, however, suggests that the importance of
conditionality may depend on the setting. In the case of Malawi, where an intervention
featured randomized conditional and unconditional treatment arms, the authors found that the
program reduced dropout rates by 40 percent among adolescent girls whether or not the cash
was transferred conditional on school attendance or was transferred unconditionally (Baird,
McIntosh and Ozler 2010). Given the extreme poverty in Malawi and the tendency for
adolescent girls to marry young, it would appear that cash grants were quickly translated into
educational opportunities for girls, even when they were provided unconditionally, in a
setting where educational aspirations are high but family resources are very limited.
Creating a girl-friendly environment in the school and within the classroom: Many of the
programs catalogued in the compendium on educational programs for adolescent girls include
some or all the elements necessary to create a supportive and empowering environment for
girls (Lloyd and Young 2009). These include the recruitment and training of female teachers,
gender training for teachers and mentoring, tutoring and peer support, the provision of toilets
for girls and/or sanitary supplies.
Nearly a quarter of the programs for which data were gathered for the compendium involve
the recruitment and training of female teachers. Research suggests that this is an effective
approach. Studies from a range of settings including Bangladesh, Mozambique, United
States as well as cross-national studies in Africa and the developing world (Khandker 1996,
Asadullah et al 2006, Asadullah and Chaudhury 2006, Handa 2002, Huisman and Smits
2009, Michaelowa 2001, Dee 2007) show the positive effects of the presence of female
teachers and/or other female educational staff on girls’ enrollment and learning outcomes.
By boosting secondary enrollment and completion, the presence of female teachers can also
increase the supply of female teachers for the future by creating a cadre of young women
eligible to train for the teaching profession.
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Nearly a quarter of programs include gender training for teachers (Lloyd and Young 2009).
While none of these programs have been evaluated, research suggests that this might be a
promising approach. Lloyd, Mensch and Clark (2000), using data from their own speciallydesigned school and household surveys in rural Kenya, found various measures of gender
treatment to be statistically significant factors associated with the probability of dropout for
girls but not for boys. These included measures of the extent to which boys were favored in
class over girls, boys were provided with more supportive advice than girls, teachers viewed
more difficult subjects like mathematics less seriously for girls, harassment of girls by boys
was more tolerated and girls’ reported experience with less equal treatment in the school was
not fully acknowledged by boys. Their research found that girls suffered from negative
attitudes and discriminatory behavior in both academically strong and academically weak
schools. Teachers’ attitudes and behaviors revealed lower expectations for adolescent girls
and traditional assumptions about gender roles (NRC/IOM 2005).
Almost half the programs documented in the compendium include some aspect of mentoring,
tutoring or peer support (Lloyd and Young 2009). Most of these programs fall in the afterschool category. An excellent example of the value of peer support comes from the
experience of Camfed (the campaign for female education), a British NGO which works in
Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia to support girls’ education using a holistic
approach. To support adolescent girls’ transitions to work after school, Cama was formed in
1998 in partnership with the first 400 high-school graduates of the Camfed program in order
to provide a network of mentors for the next generation of girls exiting school who need
financial training and advise on setting up their own businesses. Cama is now a pan-African
social movement with 14,005 members in 77 rural districts of Africa whose members are
reinvesting the benefits of their education in their communities and in the next generation of
girls participating in Camfed programs.
(http://us.camfed.org/documents/Camfed_Impact_Report_Highlights_US.pdf).
The construction of girls-only toilets and the provision of sanitary supplies have recently
emerged in the development literature as potentially cheap and effective ways to support the
school attendance of adolescent girls (e.g. Kristoff and WuDunn 2009). Indeed, Lloyd and
Young (2009) documented that 65 (20 percent) of the 322 girl-friendly programs in her
compendium included toilets for girls or sanitary supplies. However, there is little evidence
for a gender difference in absenteeism in sub-Saharan Africa or other less developed regions
(Lloyd and Young 2009). Furthermore, the only published randomized trial of sanitary supply
provision in Nepal did not find that the provision of menstrual cups2 had any effect on school
attendance despite a rapid uptake in the use of the cups by participating girls. In a recent
study of the effect of toilet availability and quality on girls’ school attendance in Malawi,
Grant, Lloyd and Mensch (2010) did not find that improved toilets, in terms of numbers
available, degree of cleanliness or privacy were significant factors explaining variations in
girls’ absence across schools. They conclude that these approaches appear to be much less
promising in producing positive educational outcomes for girls than other girl-friendly
approaches mentioned above.
Curricular reforms responsive to market demand: Issues of educational relevance transcend
gender but, given what we know about young women’s current disadvantages in labor
2
A menstrual cup is an inserted reusable device that collects menstrual blood and requires less water for
cleaning and self-care during menstruation.
9
market, educational reforms which address the issues of relevance are likely to differentially
benefit girls. In the 2007 World Development Report (World Bank 2006), one of the areas
identified for policy action was the development of curricula at the post-basic educational
level designed to teach practical subjects as well as critical thinking and behavioral skills to
enhance connections between school and work. Lloyd and Young (2009) provide an
educational manifesto for adolescent girls that describe the skills that girls should be
acquiring at each phase of adolescence (Box 1 below). For example, they note the importance
of critical thinking skills, fluency in an international language, computer skills, financial
literacy among other skills for girls ages 13-15.
Box 1
Knowledge and skills every girl should be acquiring during their education
Ages 10-12: literacy, numeracy, critical thinking skills, basic health knowledge, knowledge
about their communities and the world
Ages 13-15: reading and writing fluency, critical thinking skills, fluency in an internationally
spoken language, computer skills, proficiency in math/science, health and reproductive health
knowledge, financial literacy, skills for social and civic participation, knowledge about social
systems and local and global issues
Ages 16-19: marketable skills, information-gathering skills and habits for lifelong learning,
financial knowledge and skills
Source: Lloyd and Young (2009).
An interesting example of such an approach is the Girls Be Ambitious program in Cambodia
that is designed to help prevent the trafficking of girls for sexual and labor exploitation. The
program, which is funded by Japan Relief for Cambodia/American Assistance for Cambodia
(JRfC/AAfC) combines financial incentives to stay in school with curricular enhancements
which is vocationally oriented (www.camnet.com.kh/Girls-Ambitious/). The participating
schools, which are formal government schools, have received certain enhancements including
internet connections, computers as well as courses in English and farming.
Curricular reform is rarely discussed as a gender issue and need not focus on gender to yield
benefits for young women. Global shifts in labor demand, however, are creating more
opportunities for women in sectors such as services and tourism which are friendly to women
and which often demand English fluency and computer skills (Standing 1999). If women are
adequately prepared, they will be able to seize those opportunities.
Integrative programs combining all three elements: There are few educational programs for
girls that appear to combine all three elements. This is because of the many challenges
involved in putting such a program in place. In Box 2 below, we showcase Development in
Literacy (DIL), a US based non-profit developed by Pakistani-Americans, to address the poor
state of education in Pakistan. This program does combine all three approaches. As
Pakistani-Americans, the founders of the organization are committed to bringing the best
educational practices used around the world to Pakistani children, particularly girls, in order
to “equip them to succeed in the global market place (http://www.dil.org/about-us.html)”.
With their unique perspective of having grown up in Pakistan and now living and raising
10
children in the US , the founders and their growing band of supports had the knowledge,
commitment and access to dare what many might have thought was impossible. Their
example should be an inspiration to others who grew up in developing countries, are now
living in the West and may want to give back to their country of origin. While DIL has not
yet been evaluated, it has grown and developed in an adverse environment and there has been
much learning and improving along the way.
Box 2
Educational building blocks for women’s economic empowerment within the formal
school system
The Case of Developments in Literacy in Pakistan3
Developments in Literacy (DIL) is an NGO formed by Pakistani Americans 13 years ago to
address issues of school quality and girls’ educational disadvantage in Pakistan in partnership
with local Pakistani NGOs. DIL’s program has expanded considerably since its founding
with the support of other parts of the Pakistani diaspora living in Canada and Britain. DIL
now runs 147 schools in nine districts in all four provinces of Pakistan educating more than
16,000 students. Girls represent the majority of students attending these schools with
percentages ranging from 60 to 70 percent depending on the location and school. Their
mission is “to provide quality education to disadvantaged children, especially girls, by
establishing and operating [formal] schools in the underdeveloped regions of Pakistan, with a
strong focus on gender equality and community participation.” All their schools, which
include both coed and girls schools covering grades 1-8 (primary and middle school in the
Pakistani system), include certain basic elements in terms of curriculum and pedagogy
representing the building blocks for girls’ empowerment. First and foremost, they have
developed their own Teacher Education Center to address the poor quality of existing teacher
training using student-centered teaching methods. This training is being made mandatory for
all DIL teachers (96 percent of whom are female) and is conducted during the summer
months when schools are not in session. All DIL schools emphasize creativity as well as
social skills and critical thinking skills and begin teaching English in the early grades along
with local languages. DIL has recognized the need to revamp the curriculum starting in the
earliest years and developed its own reading materials in English and Urdu with stories and
illustrations showing girls exercising leadership and pursuing non-traditional roles and
occupations starting with readers in Grade 1. Inquiry-based science instruction (using low
cost materials to develop science kits) and computer labs (including internet connectivity in
some classrooms) have also been introduced into the learning environment. Extracurricular
activities are another an important feature of DIL schools and these include school trips to
local historic sites which allow students some exposure to the larger world around them.
As the program has evolved, the leadership of DIL has recognized the importance of
supporting their girls in making a transition to secondary school (grades 9 and 10), as well as
transitions to college (grades 11 and 12) and to employment. As a result, starting with the
graduates of grade 8 at the end of middle school in 2007, they began providing financial
3
The information for this case study were based on information on the DIL website, including recent annual
reports, as well as interviews with their founder, Fiza Shah, based in Los Angeles and with their Executive
Director, Anjana Raza, based in Islamabad.
11
support to girls graduating from DIL schools to go on to government secondary schools.4
These scholarships include not only funds for tuition but also for books, tutors and
transportation (often the largest expense because of the distances many girls in remote areas
had to travel to the nearest secondary school). Their grade-to-grade transition rates have been
impressive with typically over 80 percent transitioning to grade nine. Impressive numbers of
girls from some of the earliest projects are now progressing to college and on to professional
careers, with some entering the teaching and health professions. Most girls stay in their
villages to find local jobs.
The experience of DIL has shown the importance of investing in quality from the earliest
grades in terms of pedagogy and curricular content if girls are going to break out of existing
cultural constraints and become economically empowered. As the program becomes more
mature, it would be encouraging to see a greater commitment to impact evaluation so that the
critical elements of their approach can be documented as a model for larger scale-up in
government schools.
4
In a few cases boys were also provided with scholarships if they could not afford the costs. About 5% of
scholarships to date have gone to boys.
12
Table 1. Characteristics of educational programs serving adolescent girls that have a
vocational or livelihoods component
Number of Programs
Percent of all programs
Alternative Schools
42
71
Complimentary schools
9
15
Formal schools
21
36
After School programs
12
20
Female Teachers
19
32
Gender Training for Teachers
11
19
Mentoring
18
31
Life Skills
52
88
Girls Only
21
35
Total
59
100
Institutional Settings
Other Girl-Friendly
Features
Source: Lloyd (2009) compendium of 322 educational programs serving adolescent girls in
developing countries
13
Figure 1a: Regional school attendance rates
100
90
80
School attendance rates (%)
70
60
50
male
40
female
30
20
10
0
Africa
EAP
ECA
LACAB
SAR
Africa
12‐16 year olds
EAP
ECA
LACAB
17‐21 year olds
Source: Buvinic, Guzman and Lloyd (2007)
14
SAR
Figure 1b: Regional labour force participation rates
80
70
Labour force participation rates (%)
60
50
40
male
female
30
20
10
0
Africa
EAP
ECA
LACAB
SAR
Africa
12‐16 year olds
EAP
ECA
LACAB
17‐21 year olds
Source: Buvinic, Guzman and Lloyd (2007)
15
SAR
female
Source: Grant and Behrman (2010)
16
male
Bangladesh
India
Nepal
Pakistan
Kenya
Madagascar
Malawi
Mozambique
Namibia
Rwanda
Tanzania
Uganda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Benin
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Chad
Cote d'Ivoire
Ghana
Guinea
Mali
Niger
Nigeria
Senegal
Bolivia
Colombia
Dominican Republic
Haiti
Nicaragua
Peru
Indonesia
Philippines
Vietnam
Egypt
Jordan
Morocco
Turkey
%ge of children aged 16‐18 who entered secondary school, conditional on ever‐enrolment, percentage points, 2000‐2006
Figure 2a: Percentage of children aged 16-18 who entered secondary school, conditional
on ever-enrolment, 2000-2006
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1990‐1997
Source: Grant and Behrman (2010)
17
2000‐2006
Bangladesh
India
Nepal
Pakistan
Kenya
Madagascar
Malawi
Mozambique
Namibia
Rwanda
Tanzania
Uganda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Benin
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Chad
Cote d'Ivoire
Ghana
Guinea
Mali
Niger
Nigeria
Senegal
Bolivia
Colombia
Dominican Republic
Haiti
Nicaragua
Peru
Indonesia
Philippines
Vietnam
Egypt
Jordan
Morocco
Turkey
Gender gap in %ge of children aged 16‐18 who entered secondary school, conditional on ever‐enrolment, percentage points
Figure 2b: Change in the gender gap of children aged 16-18 who entered secondary
school, conditional on ever-enrolment
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
‐5%
‐10%
‐15%
‐20%
Sub‐Saharan Africa
Namibia
Madagascar
Ethiopia
U. R. Tanzania
Lesotho
Rwanda
Niger
Mozambique
Burkina Faso
Mali
Senegal
Zimbabwe Chad
Cameroon
Uganda
Swaziland
Guinea
Congo
Liberia
Malawi
D. R. Congo
Benin
Zambia
Côte d'Ivoire
Kenya
Nigeria
Ghana
Arab States
Jordan
Egypt
Morocco
Central Asia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
East Asia/Pacific
Philippines
Indonesia
Cambodia
South/West Asia
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Nepal
India
Latin America/Caribbean
Dominican Rep.
Colombia
Honduras
Haiti
Bolivia
Centr./East. Europe
Ukraine
Turkey
Secondary completion rate (as a % of all individuals ages 22 to 24)
Sub‐Saharan Africa
Namibia
Madagascar
Ethiopia
U. R. Tanzania
Lesotho
Rwanda
Niger
Mozambique
Burkina Faso
Mali
Senegal
Zimbabwe Chad
Cameroon
Uganda
Swaziland
Guinea
Congo
Liberia
Malawi
D. R. Congo
Benin
Zambia
Côte d'Ivoire
Kenya
Nigeria
Ghana
Arab States
Jordan
Egypt
Morocco
Central Asia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
East Asia/Pacific
Philippines
Indonesia
Cambodia
South/West Asia
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Nepal
India
Latin America/Caribbean
Dominican Rep.
Colombia
Honduras
Haiti
Bolivia
Centr./East. Europe
Ukraine
Turkey
Secondary completion rate (as a % of all individuals ages 22 to 24)
Figure 3a: Secondary completion rate for 22 to 24 year olds, latest year available
100
90
Female
Male
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Source: DHS datasets, various years
Figure 3b: Gender gaps in secondary completion rate for 22 to 24 year olds, latest year
available
20
Gender gap (male ‐ female)
15
10
5
0
‐5
‐10
‐15
Source: DHS datasets, various years
18
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