CRANK Research Spotlight: Girls' empowerment interventions to address child marriage and support married girls
Spotlight and poster exploring the evidence behind the WHO's conditional recommendation to implement interventions to empower girls by building their knowledge, skills, assets and social networks. The appropriateness of this recommendation is conditional on context (conditions) and the individual involved (circumstances). Includes implications for policy and programmatic work and research, and practical tools to support implementation.
What this resource is for
To prevent child marriage and support married girls, the World Health Organisation (WHO) conditionally recommends implementing interventions to empower girls by building their knowledge, skills, assets and social networks. The appropriateness of this recommendation is conditional on context (conditions) and the individual involved (circumstances).
In the Research Spotlight, we look at the evidence behind this recommendation, and the implications for policy and programmatic work and research. We also offer additional evidence, insights and practical tools to support implementation of such interventions.
You can use this Spotlight, including its themes and areas for consideration, as prompts for further discussion and research, and to ensure your work is informed by the existing evidence.
The poster provides a summary of what works to improve girls' empowerment and child marriage outcomes, with key tools to put this into practice.
Why focus on girls’ empowerment and child marriage?
Empowerment interventions aim to increase girls’ agency – that is, their ability to make and act on their decisions – and ensure they have the resources, knowledge and skills to avoid child marriage.[i] These girl-focused interventions can influence child marriage outcomes through three pathways:
- Internal transformation: Participation in the intervention can build girls’ awareness of their rights, opportunities and alternatives to child marriage.[ii]
- Reducing risks and expanding opportunities: Building girls’ protective assets – like resources, knowledge, skills and social support – can reduce girls’ risks and expand opportunities.[iii]
- Building solidarity and influencing others: Increasing girls’ mobility, visibility and voice at home and in the community can promote wider change.[iv]
What works to improve girls' empowerment and child marriage outcomes
1. Grounding activities in local context, systems & services:
- Assess girls’ agency & decision-making around child marriage[v]
- Involve girls in the design, delivery & monitoring of interventions[vi]
- Contextualise & adapt promising methodologies, considering power dynamics & risks.[vii]
- Provide childcare & infant/child-friendly meeting spaces.[viii]
2. Safe spaces & girl-centred asset or skill-building interventions:
- Offer peer-facilitated reflective dialogues & gender rights/empowerment training.[ix]
- Offer interactive life skills training, including social & emotional skills (e.g. how to influence decisions), digital literacy & critical thinking.[x]
- Offer/link with non-formal education, non-traditional vocational training, small grants & livelihood empowerment programmes.[xi]
- Facilitate access to trusted mentors (e.g. trained facilitators from the community).
- Develop a culturally relevant curriculum with girls & community members.[xii]
3. Working in partnership across levels & sectors:
- Link girls’ empowerment with sexual & reproductive health, norms-based & economic support-focused interventions (e.g. cash transfers).
- Engage boys, leaders, service providers, parents, mothers-in-law & husbands/partners as allies,[xiii] including around girls’ status, household decision-making & violence.[xiv]
- Anchor social norms interventions in existing women’s collectives[xv] & work with women’s rights/led organisations & feminist movements to shift gender norms & division of labour.[xvi]
- Advocate for long-term, flexible funding to respond to girls’ evolving needs.[xvii]
- Work with governments to embed empowerment & gender-transformative approaches in emerging priority work areas (e.g. climate crisis & green growth).
Practical tools to support policy and programmatic work on child marriage and girls’ education
- She’s the First has a hub for girl-centred programmes, a Just for girls area, and many girl-centred tools and resources, including:
- the What would you do? game to inspire healthy relationships,
- a Feminist mentorship manual,
- a Listening to girls toolkit.
- EMpower Learning together toolkit for individuals and organisations planning girl-centred programmes.
- Launch Girls for girl-centred entrepreneurship programming.
- International Rescue Committee and International Medical Corps women and girls’ safe spaces toolkit for advancing women’s and girls’ empowerment in humanitarian settings.
- International Rescue Committee’s Girl Shine resources to support work on gender-based violence with adolescent girls – including married girls – in humanitarian settings, including a self-paced training.
- Norwegian Church Aid’s ENGAGE lifeskills and group curriculum for girls, boys, parents, teachers, religious and community leaders in humanitarian settings.
- Plan International’s adolescent programming toolkit and parenting and adolescent life skills programme for teams supporting adolescents and their caregivers in emergency and protracted crises.
- Save the Children’s Girls Decide lifeskills curriculum for work with girls in migration and/or displacement settings.
- The SenseMaker storytelling tool to allow the narrator to analyse their own story in real time to give it deeper meaning.
- CARE Tipping Point intervention package for synchronised engagement with girls and their families and communities, including a structured allyship manual.
- Girls Not Brides Stand Up, Speak Out! youth activism training guides.
- International Rescue Committee’s Why wait? report on how the humanitarian system can better fund women-led and women’s rights organisations.
Downloads
Data sources
- [i] Psaki, S. R., Melnikas, A. J., Haque, E., Saul, G., Misunas, C., Patel, S. K., Ngo, T. and Amin, S,. 2021, “What are the drivers of child marriage? A conceptual framework to guide policies and programs”, Journal of Adolescent Health, 69:6.
- [ii] Warner, 2014, How empowering girls can help end child marriage, Girls Not Brides.
- [iii] Population Council, 2016, Building girls’ protective assets: A collection of tools for program design.
- [iv] Warner, 2014, op. cit.
- [v] Saul, G., Diarra, A., Melnikas, A. J., and Amin, S., 2021, “Voice without choice? Investigating adolescent girls’ agency in marital decision-making in Niger”, Progress in Development Studies, 20:4, p. 10, summarised in The CRANK, 2023, Evidence review: Child marriage interventions and research from 2020 to 2022, prepared by Harrison, A., p. 15.
- [vi] UNFPA, 2021, Transcending norms: Gender transformative approaches in women’s and girls’ safe spaces in humanitarian settings, p. 37.
- [vii] Girls Not Brides, 2024, Child marriage in conflict- and crisis-affected settings: Evidence and practice, prepared by Harrison, A., Casey, J. and Sadd, E., p. 81.
- [viii] Ibid., p. 48.
- [ix] Chowdhary. P., Mekuria, F. T., Tewahido, D., Gulema, H., Derni, R., Edmeades, J., 2022, “Building sustainable and scalable peer-based programming: promising approaches from TESFA in Ethiopia”, Reproductive Health, 19:1, p. 2; summarised in Girls Not Brides, 2024, op. cit., p. 45.
- [x] Ibid, p. 42.
- [xi] Saul, G., Diarra, A., Melnikas, A. J., and Amin, S., 2021, op. cit., p. 10; summarised in The CRANK, 2023, op. cit., p. 16.
- [xii] Howe, K., Stites, E., Moran, M., Marshak, Hammada, A., Sulaiman, S., Lony, N., Maguek, T., 2022, Circumscribed Lives: Separated, divorced and widowed female youth in South Sudan and the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Tufts University, p. 2, summarised in Girls Not Brides, 2024, p. 45.
- [xiii] Ibid.
- [xiv] Endale, K., Jones, N., et al., 2022, Exploring the patterning and drivers of FGM/C and child marriage in pastoralist Ethiopia: Baseline report from the Afar and Somali regions, GAGE ODI, p.70.
- [xv] The CRANK, 2024, Research meeting: The intersections of child marriage – Strengthening holistic and cross-sectoral solutions.
- [xvi] Staszewska, K., Miller, K., Lever, E., 2020, Moving more money to the drivers of change: How bilateral and multilateral funders can resource feminist movements, AWID, Mama Cash, Count Me In!, p.8, summarised in The CRANK, 2023, op. cit., p. 19.
- [xvii] Girls Not Brides. 2024, op. cit., p.66.