Jennifer McCleary-Sills

Voice and agency : empowering women and girls for shared prosperity

This report on voice and agency, which builds on the 2012 World Development Report, focuses on several areas key to womens 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. The 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. 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.

Child Marriage: A Critical Barrier to Girls' Schooling and Gender Equality in Education

E ducation is not only a human right, but also a powerful tool for women’s empowerment and a strategic development investment. There is a clear multiplier effect to educating girls; women who are educated are healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn more income, have fewer children, and provide better healthcare and education to their children compared to women with little or no education (Klugman et al. 2014). The benefits of education thus transmit across generations as well as to communities at large. Where girls have greater educational and economic opportunities, they are more likely to pursue those opportunities than to have children in their teenage years. Yet a host of structural, social, and financial barriers prevent girls’ enrollment and completion of both primary and secondary schools. Over the past two decades, uneven progress has been made toward gender equality in global education goals. The most recent UNESCO data show that of 161 countries, 60 percent have achieved gender parity in enrollment at the primary school level, compared to only 38 percent of countries at the secondary level. Major gender imbalances persist, especially in lowincome countries, just 20 percent of which have reached gender parity at the primary level, and only 10 percent at the secondary level. This is a major global challenge. At current rates of