Policy Brief Issue 34 EMPOWERING ADOLESCENT GIRLS IN A CRISIS CONTEXT: GENDER INNOVATION LAB LESSONS FROM SIERRA LEONE The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) conducts impact evaluations of IN THE TIME OF EBOLA development interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking to Authors: Oriana Bandiera, Niklas Buehren, Markus Goldstein, Imran generate evidence on how to close the gender gap in earnings, Rasul, and Andrea Smurra productivity, assets and agency. The GIL team is currently working on over 70 impact evaluations in KEY MESSAGES more than 25 countries with the aim of building an evidence base • In Sierra Leone, the Empowerment and Livelihoods for Adolescents with lessons for the region. (ELA) initiative sought to enhance adolescent girls’ social and economic empowerment by providing life skills training, livelihood INTERNATIONAL GROWTH CENTRE training, and credit support to start income-generating activities. The IGC aims to promote The Ebola crisis occurred during the project, resulting in curbed sustainable growth in developing implementation. countries by providing demand- led policy advice based on • In control communities (no ELA clubs) that were highly disrupted frontier research. The IGC directs a global network of world-leading by Ebola, young women spent significantly more time with men, researchers and in-country out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates rose, and we find a significant teams in Africa and South Asia and works closely with partner drop in school enrollment post-crisis. governments to generate high quality research and policy • In contrast, younger girls (12-17 years old) who resided in advice on key growth challenges. communities that benefitted from the program in high Ebola Based at LSE and in partnership disruption areas were more likely to be in school, and saw their with the University of Oxford, the IGC is majority funded by the numeracy and literacy levels improve. Additionally, both young UK Department for International and older (18-25) girls in high and low Ebola disruption areas Development (DFID). http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab who participated in the program spent must take into account the unique constraints less time with men and were less likely to that they face. get pregnant out of wedlock. HERE’S WHAT WE DID • However, as younger women spend less time with men in the presence of ELA, men The ELA program, implemented by the NGO BRAC, likely shift their attention to older girls: the provided life skills training, livelihood training, and evaluation finds an increase in unwanted credit support to start income-generating activities. and transactional sex by older girls in areas Life skills training sessions covered sexual and highly exposed to the Ebola crisis. reproductive health, family planning, rape and gender-based violence, as well as other topics WHY IS ADOLESCENCE A such as management and negotiation skills, rights CRITICAL TIME TO INTERVENE, and legal knowledge. In contrast to school-based ESPECIALLY IN CRISIS CONTEXTS? information campaigns on adolescent health, the ELA program operated outside of schools, through Of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, development clubs within the community which 70% are girls. Yet, adolescence is a critical time acts as a social and safe space. Club participation for girls. Supporting adolescent girls can help limit was purely voluntary. their risk of contracting HIV/STI and of having an unintended pregnancy. Two hundred communities were randomly assigned to either a (control) group that did not receive However, adolescent girls face specific barriers, any treatment, or to one of three (treatment) including concurrent labor market and fertility groups: one which was offered the ELA club and decisions. Interventions targeting adolescent girls life skills training; another which was received all the previous as well as livelihood training; and a third which was offered the entire package plus microcredit support. As the program was implemented, the Ebola epidemic hit Sierra Leone. The outbreak potentially affected the adolescent girls in a number of direct or indirect ways. First, in an effort to stem the spread of the disease, the government-imposed quarantines, limited travel and closed public spaces such as markets in certain areas, which significantly impacted the economic activities of men and women. Second, schools were closed for an entire academic year. Finally, Sierra Leone’s limited health resources were diverted into caring from going to school, these younger girls for patients and preventing the spread of the also suffer a strong shock to their school epidemic, limiting their ability to attend to other enrollment. They are less likely to re-enroll issues such as sexual and reproductive health. We in schools after they reopen and they are use these indirect impacts to define the degree to more likely to be working—the disruption which a community was disrupted by Ebola. thereby seems to speed up the school- to-work transition. HERE’S WHAT WE FOUND • In contrast, girls in ELA communities, • Young girls who resided in non-ELA regardless of how disrupted these communities that were highly affected communities were by Ebola, spent by Ebola spent more time with men, less time with men and were less were more likely to become pregnant, likely to get pregnant out of wedlock and were less likely to reenroll in than girls who resided in non-ELA school after the crisis. The girls spent communities. They were also less likely to an average of an additional 1.3 hours only engage in income-generating activities weekly with men compared to before the without attending school. The ELA clubs crisis. In accordance with this increased thereby seem to slow done the school-to- work transition in the most affected villages exposure to men, we see subsequent impacts on pregnancy: younger girls in • The drop in enrollment for girls who these communities were twice as likely to lived in high Ebola-related disruption be pregnant relative to girls in communities communities is cut by half if they’ve that were less affected by the Ebola been exposed to the clubs, and they crisis, and nearly all were out-of-wedlock see their numeracy and literacy levels pregnancies. Possibly as a result of Sierra improve, notably in terms of business Leone’s policy that forbade pregnant girls skills, attitudes towards gender roles, and health-related knowledge. The mitigating effect of ELA on increases in out-of-wedlock pregnancies likely helped keep younger girls in school. • However, as younger girls spend less time with men in the presence of ELA, men likely shift their attention to older girls: the evaluation finds an increase in unwanted and transactional sex by older girls in areas highly exposed to the Ebola crisis. The ELA program nevertheless increases the ability of older girls to compensate for some of the risks associated with transactional sex. Fortunately, as a result of the life skills provided by ELA, older girls are more likely to use modern contraceptives. Additionally, the evaluation does not find any impact on younger women learning or imitating the behavior of the older cohort in moving into transactional sex. WHAT ARE THE POLICY IMPLICATIONS? These results show how safe spaces interventions can be effective even in the face of large-scale shocks such as Ebola crises as we currently see in DRC and Uganda, as well as other shocks constraining economic and social life, by buffering girls from the adverse effects of crises. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/31219 FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Markus Goldstein mgoldstein@worldbank.org Photo credit: Dominic Chavez / World Bank (front page), George Lewis / The World Bank (pages 2 and 4), Geraint Hill Fannie Delavelle (page 3) fdelavelle@worldbank.org This work has been funded in part by the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), a multi-donor trust fund 1818 H St NW administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through experimentation and Washington, DC 20433 USA knowledge creation to help governments and the private sector focus policy and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The first draft of this policy brief was released in July 2019.