RESULTS SERIES EMPOWERING GIRLS FOR LASTING IMPACTS Governments are spending more than ever A lack of marketable skills stops young people before on youth employment programs but rarely from getting jobs in many developing countries. do they explicitly target young women. For girls, Young women are especially disadvantaged developing strong life skills is key to building their because girls have lower secondary school capacity to deal effectively with everyday life. completion rates than boys, and social and cultural barriers can restrict women’s job options. THE CHALLENGE While governments are investing in youth Young women tend to have less employment programs, these often fail to target education, and time available for women. This may be in part because of lack of paid work because of domestic knowledge of what elements make a program responsibilities and they often do effective in addressing the specific challenges not pursue jobs in high-paying fields facing young women transitioning to the because they are not considered labor market. suitable for women. Supported by the Umbrella Facility for Gender There’s also a strong family formation Equality, the World Bank Group’s (WBG) Africa dimension to young women’s Gender Innovation Lab, together with the employment decisions. Adolescent Girls Initiative, has generated some of the strongest evidence to date on skills development programs for adolescent girls and THE RESULT young women. In Uganda, the Africa Gender Innovation Lab Teaching life and livelihood skills to evaluated the Empowerment and Livelihoods adolescent girls in safe clubs led to a for Adolescents Program, which has been marked increase in self-employment and a implemented in several countries by the decrease in early pregnancy and marriage. international development organization BRAC. The program creates a network of clubs for The model is being used by projects for adolescent girls where they can safely discuss adolescent girls and young women in challenges with their peers in small groups many other countries, including for over and build their social networks. Mentors teach 600,000 young women in India. life skills that include education about sex and Economic Empowerment of Adolescent Girls marriage, as well as short-term livelihood training and Young Women Program run by the Ministry in areas like agriculture and poultry rearing. of Gender, Children and Social Protection, For a cost of less than US $100 per girl per year, provided classroom-based technical and life skills the program is very cost-effective. training for young women, as well as follow-up support. Here, a randomized impact evaluation Compared to young women in communities found employment to increase by 47 percent and without these clubs, girls in this program were earnings by 80 percent. 72 percent more likely to be engaged in income- generating activities two years later, driven by a Lessons from Uganda and Liberia are now marked increase in self-employment. This raised shaping the WBG’s design of larger projects for their monthly spending money by 38 percent. adolescent girls and young women. In India, Teen pregnancies were 26 percent lower, and the Tejaswini Socioeconomic Empowerment the rate of early marriage and cohabitation was of Adolescent Girls & Young Women project 58 percent lower. The share of girls forced to provides girls aged 14 to 24 community-based have sex against their will in the previous twelve social support, life skills education, business skills, months was nearly halved, and the age that and vocational training. It aims to reach about girls said they wanted to get married and have 680,000 young women. The South Asia Gender children and childbearing both rose. Innovation Lab is now evaluating Tejaswini to learn about how to take a model mainly There are also indications that these benefits implemented by international NGOs in Africa to may extend beyond these girls to their brothers. scale as part of a large government-run program Additional research suggests empowered with multiple local NGOs as implementers in the girls trigger a surge in their brothers’ state of Jharkhand in India. competitiveness. In Liberia, the comparable The Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality is a World Bank Group multidonor trust fund investing in knowledge, diagnostics, impact evaluations and data to help policy makers and practitioners close gender gaps in countries and sectors. Learn more on www.worldbank.org/gender/ufge