Unravelling adolescent girls’ aspirations in Nepal: Status and associations with individual-, household-, and community-level characteristics

Abstract

Background Adolescents’ aspirations have potential to influence their present and future well-being. Limited knowledge exists on adolescent girls’ aspirations and their determinants, particularly in low-income contexts. Methods and findings Using cross-sectional data, collected in 2018 in Nepal, within the Suaahara II Adolescent Panel Survey, (n = 840), adolescent girls’ aspirations in several domains—education, occupation, marriage, fertility, health, and nutrition–were described. Regression models were estimated to explore associations between individual, household and community characteristics and these aspirations for all adolescents and separately for younger (10–14 years) and older (15–19 years) girls. Age, school attendance, and self-efficacy, as well as household wealth, caste/ethnicity, size, and agro-ecological zone of residence were significantly associated with aspirations, although effect sizes and significance varied by aspiration domain and age group. Conclusions Findings underscore the curtailing effect of poverty on aspirations and the dynamic nature of aspirations. Initiatives to foster girls’ aspirations must address both individual and contextual factors.

Effectiveness of an Intervention Programme on Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet in a Preschool Child: A Randomised Controlled Trial

“…The implementation of school gardens provides a variety of benefits for children, such as increasing environmental awareness, encouraging teamwork, increasing motivation and promoting healthy eating habits, with the changes brought about in the eating habits and nutritional health of students being the object of study of most of the research carried out in several countries [29][30][31].…”

Eating for honour: A cultural-ecological analysis of food behaviours among adolescent girls in the southern plains of Nepal

“…Our data were collected in 2013 and so are somewhat dated, however the lack of research about adolescent eating and nutrition in Nepal makes this study an important contribution to the literature. Recent research indicates that the cultural norms discussed in this paper still constrain girls and women [15,45,57,58], and our findings provide an important description of a particular point in time.…”

“…Patriarchal gender norms around boy preference and household roles are still evident [56,57], and it should not be presumed that women's perceptions about nutritional need of boys and girls, and the mobility of girls will change with women's increased control over resources in male migrant households. Recent studies from similar settings in Nepal [14,58,59] illustrate that gender remains a consistent and significant determinant of what is eaten and how much is eaten in this context, but more research is necessary-from different parts of Nepal and with men and boys-to understand the effects of political and economic changes on adolescent nutrition [60].…”

Generational trends in the transition to womanhood in lowland rural Nepal: Changes in the meaning of early marriage

“…Using questionnaires developed by the research team on the basis of literature review (Allendorf et al, 2017;Madjdian et al, 2021;Maertens, 2013;Santhya et al, 2017) and prior research in this and similar populations in South Asia (Marphatia, 2016), we inquired about the norms the DILs and MILs held toward a daughter's life opportunities, including their education, age at marriage, when would be too early or too late to marry and why, and who should make these decisions. We specifically asked about "a daughter" in order to include the full sample, and not only those women who actually had a daughter.…”