What We Learn about Girls' Education from Interventions that Do Not Focus on Girls

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Missed Opportunities

“…But promising interventions have now been implemented for some time in many countries. These interventions have been evaluated rigorously, and useful lessons can be learned from those evaluations, whether for educating girls (Evans and Yan, 2018) or for delaying marriage and childbearing (Botea et al, 2017). For educating girls, the literature suggests that interventions specific to girls may help increase access and thereby educational attainment.…”

How Large Is the Gender Dividend? Measuring Selected Impacts and Costs of Gender Inequality

“…This note focuses especially on two types of programs that may have especially large economic benefits: (i) programs helping adolescent girls to remain in school (or facilitate the school-to-work transition) and delay marriage and childbearing; and (ii) programs enabling adult women to improve their economic opportunities. The focus on these two types of programs does not mean that other interventions are not needed -simply such programs to address gender inequality are known to be fairly effective and have especially large economic benefits (on girls' education and empowerment, see among others Unterhalter et al, 2014;Sperling and Winthrop, 2016;Botea et al, 2017, Evans and Yuan, 2019.…”

“…» Ensuring general conditions for access to education and learning. Several reviews discuss the basic general conditions required for improving girls' education (Unterhalter et al, 2014;Sperling and Winthrop, 2016;Evans and Yuan, 2019;. Some of the interventions required to ensure these basic conditions are met are likely to be as effective to improve education for girls as interventions targeted to girls specifically (Evans and Yuan, 2019).…”

“…Several reviews discuss the basic general conditions required for improving girls' education (Unterhalter et al, 2014;Sperling and Winthrop, 2016;Evans and Yuan, 2019;. Some of the interventions required to ensure these basic conditions are met are likely to be as effective to improve education for girls as interventions targeted to girls specifically (Evans and Yuan, 2019). In many countries with a high prevalence of child marriage and low educational attainment for girls, there is a need to build secondary schools closer to where girls (and boys) live or provide modes of transportation and in some cases boarding to enable them to attend schools, especially at the secondary level.…”

Effects of a Multi-Faceted Education Program on Enrollment, Equity, Learning, and School Management: Evidence from India

“…For example, there is a growing body of evidence on the effectiveness of girl-focused interventions to address the gender gap in schooling. Evans and Yuan (2018) provide a review of these interventions but find that 6 The papers contained in Damon et al (2016) consist of 115 studies -76 RCTs and 38 "High-Quality" regression discontinuity or difference in difference studies. The search involved studies conducted from 1990 to 2014, published in (peer-reviewed) academic journals from 1990 to 2014, and unpublished academic working papers written from 2010 to 2014 were included.…”