WUNRN
Voice & Agency: Empowering Women & Girls for Shared Prosperity
This major report distills vast data and hundreds of studies to shed new light on constraints facing women and girls worldwide, from epidemic levels of gender-based violence to biased laws and norms that prevent them from owning property, working, and making decisions about their own lives.
Website Page with Link to Full 218-Page Report Download: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/19036
Despite recent advances in important aspects of the lives of girls
and women, pervasive challenges remain, most often as a result of widespread
constraints. These constraints often violate women's most basic human rights.
WASHINGTON, October
10, 2014—The World Bank Group today released for purchase and free download its groundbreaking report, Voice
and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity.
The report,
released ahead of the International Day of the Girl Child, distills
vast data and hundreds of studies to shed new light on constraints facing women
and girls worldwide, from epidemic levels of gender-based violence to biased
laws and norms that prevent them from owning property, working, and making
decisions about their own lives. It highlights promising reforms and
interventions from around the world and lays out an urgent agenda for
governments, civil society, development agencies, and other stakeholders.
Among its keys
findings: Girls with little or no education are far more likely to be married
as children, suffer domestic violence, live in poverty, and lack a say over
household spending or their own health care than better-educated peers, which
harms them, their children, and communities.
Across 18 of the 20
countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage, girls with no
education were up to six times more likely to marry than girls with high school
education, the report finds. Nearly one in five girls in developing countries
meanwhile becomes pregnant before age 18, while pregnancy-related causes
account for most deaths among girls 15-19 in the developing world—nearly 70,000
die each year.
Despite recent
advances in important aspects of the lives of girls and women, pervasive
challenges remain, frequently as a result of widespread deprivations and
constraints. These often violate women’s most basic rights and are magnified
and multiplied by poverty and lack of education.
In all regions,
better educated women tend to marry later and have fewer children. Enhanced
agency—the ability to make decisions and act on them—is a key reason why
children of better educated women are less likely to be stunted: Educated
mothers have greater autonomy in making decisions and more power to act for
their children’s benefit.
Voice and Agency, which builds on
the 2012 World Development Report, focuses on several areas key to
women’s empowerment: freedom from violence, control over sexual and
reproductive health and rights, ownership and control of land and housing, and
voice and collective action.
It explores the
power of social norms in dictating how men and women can and cannot
behave—deterring women from owning property or working even where laws permit,
for example, because those who do become outcasts.
In 128
countries, laws treat men and women differently—making it
impossible, for example, for a woman to independently obtain an ID card, own or
use property, access credit, or get a job.
Key facts:
·Gender-based violence is a global
phenomenon, and in most regions no place is less safe for a woman than her own
home: More than one in three women have experienced violence, the vast majority
committed by their husbands or boyfriends. That's 700 million women—close to
the total population of Sub-Saharan Africa.
·Girls are
increasingly completing school and university, but their work choices remain restricted, by
laws and/or social norms that dictate whether and what work is appropriate.
Foregone costs in terms of productivity and income can be huge.
·Many
women lack sexual and reproductive rights: Data from
33 developing countries reveal that almost one third of women cannot refuse sex
with their partners—rising to more than seven out of 10 Nigerian, Malian, and
Senegalese women—and more than 41 percent across those 33 countries say they
could not ask their partner to use a condom.
·Each year, almost one in five girls under 18 in
developing countries gives birth: South Asia
accounts for almost half of teen pregnancies in the developing world. In
developing countries, pregnancy-related causes account for most deaths among
girls aged 15-19—nearly 70,000 die each year. The lifetime opportunity costs of
adolescent pregnancy, measured in terms of lost income, range as high as 30
percent of GDP in Uganda.
·Women and girls face a major gap
in access to and use and ownerships of ICT. In
Sub-Saharan Africa, 32 million fewer women have access to the Internet than
men. In South Asia, 25 million fewer women have access, and in the Middle East
and North Africa, 18 million.
·Delays in marriage
are associated with greater educational achievement and lower fertility. And
lower fertility can increase women’s life expectancy and has benefits for
children’s health and education.
·When more women are
elected to office, policy-making increasingly reflects the priorities of
families, women, and excluded groups.
·Property ownership
can enhance women’s agency by increasing the social status of women, amplifying
their voice, and increasing their bargaining power within the household.
·Poverty increases
gender gaps: Girls living in poor households are almost twice as likely as
their richer peers to marry young. Intimate partner violence is also more
frequent and severe in poorer households across such diverse settings as India
and Nicaragua.
·Women’s groups and collective action play a
pivotal role in building momentum for progressive reform. Strong women’s
movements are associated with more comprehensive policies on violence against
women. And when more women are elected to office, policy-making increasingly
reflects the priorities of families and women and results in greater
responsiveness to citizen needs.
Urgent agenda
Policymakers and
stakeholders need to tackle this agenda, drawing on evidence about what works
and systematically tracking progress on the ground. This must start with
reforming discriminatory laws and follow through with concerted policies and
public actions, including multi-sectoral approaches that engage with men and
boys and challenge adverse social norms.
Expanding
opportunities and amplifying the voices of women and girls isn’t a zero-sum
equation, because gender equality conveys broad development dividends for men
and boys, families, and communities. Conversely, constraining women’s agency by
limiting what jobs they can do or condoning gender-based violence can cause
huge economic losses and hinder development efforts.
Increasing school
enrollment and achieving gender equality in enrollment are longstanding
development goals. Ensuring enrollment through upper secondary levels for girls
is even more critical. Equally vital is what happens at school: Both girls and
boys leave school literate and numerate and that the values of the school
system promote gender equality and protect children from abuse.
Progress on the
sexual and reproductive health front tends to involve multi-sectoral actions:
access to contraception is critical, alongside raising awareness, life skills
training, mentoring and peer group training, and activity clubs and sports.
Women’s land
rights—which support women’s agency—can be strengthened by progressive legal
reforms and improved governance. Mandatory joint-titling helps and statutory,
customary, and religious regimes should be harmonized, with clear consent
requirements for land transfer or sale.
More and better data are needed to
measure progress and to hold governments and development agencies, such as the
World Bank, to account. Recently agreed international Core Gender Indicators are
a valuable basis, alongside agreed statistical indicators and guidelines for
measuring violence against women. More rigorous evaluations of what works are
also needed, particularly around collective voice, normative change, and
program design, the report says.
In 2012, the World
Bank Group introduced a new Gender Data site, which comprises
surveys, statistics, analytical work, and reference materials covering girls’
and women’s employment, access to productive activities, education, health,
public life and decision-making, human rights, and demographic outcomes.