Adolescent Education

What norms contribute to this behavior?

Social norms are the perceived, informal rules that define acceptable, appropriate, and obligatory actions within a given group or community. Some social norms are specific to a particular context, while others may be broad enough to span multiple contexts; even seemingly contradictory norms may exist in the same context.¹

The following examples represent social norms relevant to adolescent education (ages 10-18) that emerged from across the literature. They are not meant to be a comprehensive list of all relevant social norms or norms relevant in all contexts. 

• For boys and girls, educational attendance and attainment is strongly associated with more equitable gender attitudes. Girls with more educational attainment, particularly secondary or higher, are more likely to have more gender equitable attitudes than girls with less education.^2–7
  Meta-Norms: Gender Ideology; Social Status

• Beliefs that menstruation is unclean, impure, or unnatural, lead to feelings of embarrassment, fear, and shame for adolescent girls.^8–11 Many girls fear stigma or teasing and cope by staying home from school during their menstrual period.^8,9,11–13 The ability of girls to attend school during menstruation may also be limited by cultural beliefs, or self-imposed isolation as concealment.^4,7–9,11
  Meta-Norms: Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Privacy; Social Status

• Inequitable gender norms and roles within families place a disproportionate burden of household chores and duties on girls; this leads to reduced access to and time for educational and economic power and opportunities.^{3,4,6,14–21} Prioritization of girls’ education and equitable division of household tasks between family members can support girls’ educational attainment.^4,17 [
  Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Social Status

• Son preference is supported by norms that prioritize boys’ wellbeing and opportunity, including their educational pursuits, due to their role in livelihood security.^12,15,17,20 Education for women and girls is devalued due to their presumed lack of career options, and the assumption that women are supposed to do household labor.^4,15,17,22
  Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Social Status

• Social expectations related to early marriage and pregnancy can lead adolescent girls to drop-out of school.^{4,7,20,22–25} Postponing sexual debut, early marriage and pregnancy and receiving encouragement in school can support girls’ educational achievement.^7,14,22–24 
  Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Protection; Social Status

• Absenteeism and dropout for boys and girls occurs more often in areas where school-based corporal punishment and discrimination is common; when violence at home and/or at school decreases, school attendance rates increase.^3,23,26,27 When teachers create supportive environments at school, girls stay in school longer and families and girls postpone marriage.^22,26,28
  Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Protection

• Gender attitudes and norms often tie a girl’s value in marriage to her ‘purity’ and virginity. To secure a favorable marriage match, parents and families may limit a girl’s mobility in the community, including access to school to prevent ‘eve teasing’ (sexual harassment) and consensual adolescent romantic and sexual relationships.^{4,7,14,23,29,30}
  Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Social Status

• Girls are more likely to continue their education when parents and families are supportive.^4,26 Norms can be protective of girls’ education, such as when education will improve a girl’s marital prospects,²² her future role as a mother and educator to her children,²² and her career and economic prospects.^4,26 Additionally, if education is believed to be a human right, families are more supportive of girls’ education.²²
  Meta-Norms: Gender Ideology; Protection; Social Status

• Girls are considered more vulnerable than boys to gender-based violence outside the home, as such, their mobility is limited to protect them from violence.^14,30 When girls have increased mobility and safety, they achieve increased education and vocational skills, which in turn leads to greater caregiver support for girls’ mobility.^4,14,30,31
  Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Protection; Social Status

What other factors affect this behavior?

Other non-normative factors within and outside of the family influence educational access, participation and achievement among both boys and girls. As parents are often the primary decision-makers regarding their children’s education, parental characteristics play an important role.  Additional examples are below:

Individual

• Socio-economic Status^1–8
• Sex^3,5,8–16
• Disability⁴
• Marital Status²

Interpersonal

• Parents’ socio-demographic characteristics, such as age at marriage or educational attainment^2,3,12,15
• Supportive Adults, such as family members, teachers and mentors^2,5,9–11
• Witnessing Violence (including sexual violence, family violence, school violence, and community-based violence)^3,17,18

Community

• Geographic Settings (Urban and Rural)^{3,4,12,17,19–21}

Who influences this behavior?

Family, community members, and teachers are key supports (or barriers) for girls in their pursuit of education. This is also the case for boys, though community expectations may differ for boys and girls. Communities and social norms influence whether parents are supportive of the aspirations of girls for education, careers and other goals.

• Parents^1–8
• School Authorities, such as Teachers and Principals^{1,3,5–7,9–12}
• Peers/VYA Students^{3,4,10,13–19}
• Community^{3,17,18,20,21}

What interventions were implemented to address norms and improve behavior?

• The Samata intervention was implemented as part of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s STRIVE consortium in Karnataka state, India from 2014-2017. This multi-level intervention was designed to address barriers that prevent girls from staying in school and delaying marriage, including gender norms that devalue girls’ education leading to removing daughters from school early, arranging earlier marriages and/or dedicating them as sex workers as part of a cultural religious tradition in this setting. A theory of change was developed which posited that poverty, gender norms, poor accountability of schools and communities, and poor education, perpetuate traditions of underage marriage and sex work. This in turn heightens vulnerability to HIV infection and diminishes the quality of life for adolescent girls from scheduled castes and tribes (SC/ST) girls in rural northern Karnataka. Intervention components included establishing safe spaces for girls to meet, academic tutoring for girls, forming boys’ groups to discuss girls’ rights, engaging parents to value education and rethink norms around early marriage, linking intervention families to government incentives for girls schooling and sensitizing schools to the value of girls’ education and safety. The intervention was evaluated by a cluster-randomized control trial with parallel assignment, using a mixed-method approach, baseline and endline quantitative surveys and a longitudinal qualitative study.  Results showed that family-level norms related to education, marriage, eve teasing (sexual harassment), and girls’ mobility were strongly associated with marriage and education outcomes among 15–16-year-old adolescent girls in this setting. However, they found no difference between rates of school dropout and early marriage for girls in the control and intervention groups. Qualitative data from the intervention’s evaluation found that educational outcomes improved when parents were supportive of girls’ educational aspirations. Girls’ agency impacted their educational outcomes; girls with more agency also had supportive families and less constraining influences on their agency. Quantitative analysis found high rates of positive outcomes, including girls completing or passing secondary school and delaying marriage, sexual debut or cohabitation with husband; however there were not significant differences between control and intervention groups. At the time of the study and intervention, there were concurrent government programs at the state and national level to improve educational outcomes and decrease child marriage, which may have contributed to the improvements to outcomes throughout the entire population (control and intervention).^1–4

• The Choices, Voices and Promises interventions were implemented by Save the Children in the rural Kapilvastu District in Nepal in 2015. This multi-level gender transformative intervention includes three specific approaches for VYAs (Choices), their families (Voices) and their communities (Promises). Choices consisted of nine sessions of curriculum-based activities implemented by trained older adolescent facilitators directly with VYAs to address gender inequity, social norms, power and social status. Voices consisted of six 10-minute videos including testimonials based on six behaviors related to gender equality in very young adolescents such as delayed marriage, and equitable division of household labor, and facilitated group discussions. Promises included the public display of large posters designed to spark conversations about gender equity within the community, publicly revealed by volunteer community influencers and a culminating community celebration. An evaluation study compared two communities receiving the Choices, Voices and Promises package (individual, family and community-level) and two communities receiving only Choices (individual-level only).  For individuals, norms, attitudes and behaviors were measured across three domains: gender equity in education; gender equity in household chores and resource sharing; and gender equity in aspirations for girls and boys. For parents, norms, attitudes and behaviors were measured among one domain; delaying marriage for girls. Most measures of gender norms, attitudes, and behaviors improved in all communities, suggesting a positive effect of the Choices intervention. For example, rates of disagreement among participants with the statement, “It is more important for a girl to help at home and learn household activities than to spend time studying” increased 2.9-fold from baseline to endline. Increases in positive norms, attitudes, and behaviors reported by VYAs were generally greater in the full Choices, Voices and Promises intervention areas compared to Choices-only areas, suggesting an added benefit from the Voices and Promises interventions. Inconsistent evaluation results, particularly among parents, may reflect implementation challenges such as the compressed 3-month implementation period due to the 2015 earthquakes and subsequent political unrest.⁵