Empowering Young Women to Prevent the Early Marriage of Vulnerable Girls in Rural Zambia
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Empowering young women to prevent the early marriage of vulnerable girls in rural Zambia Baseline report | August 2019 Page 1 of 21 Contents Acronyms ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Background ............................................................................................................................................. 4 Project Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Methodology ........................................................................................................................................... 7 Baseline Findings ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Completion rates................................................................................................................................. 8 Upper Secondary Completion rate ................................................................................................. 8 Lower Secondary Completion Rate ................................................................................................. 9 Drop-out due to pregnancy and/or early marriage .......................................................................... 10 Awareness of children’s rights in regard to early marriage .............................................................. 12 Awareness amongst students ....................................................................................................... 13 Awareness among community members ..................................................................................... 13 The Re-Entry Policy ........................................................................................................................... 15 Local action in communities to enforce children’s rights ................................................................. 19 Need for Positive Role Models .......................................................................................................... 20 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 21 Page 2 of 21 Acronyms CAMA: CAMFED Alumnae Network CAMFED: Campaign for Female Education DEBS: District Education Board Secretary FGD: Focus-group discussion IDI: In-depth interview MoGE: Ministry of General Education MSG: Mother Support Group PTA: Parent-Teacher Association REP: Re-Entry Policy SDC: School Development Committee SRH: Sexual and Reproductive Health TL: Traditional Leader UNFPA: United Nations Population Fund UNICEF: United Nations Children's Fund Page 3 of 21 Background CAMFED is responsible for the delivery of the project, ‘Empowering young women to prevent the early marriage of vulnerable girls in rural Zambia’. This is a three-year project taking place in 15 districts in four provinces of rural Zambia between October 2018 and March 2021, funded by DFID UK Aid Match with a total budget of £1,332,268. The project aims to address the complex and interrelated causes of child marriage in rural Zambia. Across the world, child brides are more likely to live in rural areas, come from poorer households and have less schooling1 – girls with secondary schooling are up to six times less likely to be married early than those who have little or no schooling2. Within rural Zambia, restrictive gender norms and high levels of poverty make early marriage both a cause and effect of girls’ drop-out from school. Zambia has some of the highest rates of rural poverty and child marriage in the world. Recent economic progress has not translated into improved quality of life for rural communities: despite a decade of strong economic growth, rural poverty rates increased between 2000 and 2010. 73% of the population in Western province, 64% in Northern and 61% in Luapula, live in extreme poverty3. Social norms devaluing both girls’ education and women’s participation in the formal labour force can mean that, particularly in poor households, girls are not prioritised in a household’s education investment decisions, often leading to the girl dropping out of school. Within this context, the imperative to earn money can translate into pressures to engage in transactional sex, exposing girls to the risk of pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. Early marriage can seem the only or best available option, and is often used as a coping strategy by struggling families, with parents marrying their daughters early in the belief that this will help relieve the families’ economic burden. Girls who marry young are more likely to drop out of school, which has a significant impact on their ability to succeed academically when the common factor linking improved outcomes for young rural women in Zambia across the board is education. Women who have completed secondary school are more likely to be in waged employment, participate in decision-making, take up a leadership role, and to own a business4. However, 42% of Zambian women aged 20-49 report having married before age 18, compared to 4.2% of men5. While nationally the practice appears to be on the decline, urban-rural disparities mean significant challenges remain, particularly in the rural areas this project is targeting: in Muchinga, one of the target provinces of this project, the proportion of women aged 20-49 who report having being married before age 18 is 60%6. When girls do go to school, they face structural challenges in the education system that often force them to drop out, and point them back towards early marriage. As well as the direct costs of going to school, these include a lack of female teachers in rural schools, meaning poor support and few role models, narrow curricula that ill-equip girls for life after school, gendered classrooms and discrimination, and the risk of sexual and physical abuse and/or violence at or on the way to school. Early marriage limits young married girls’ skills, resources, knowledge, social support, mobility, and autonomy therefore they often have little power in relation to their husband, putting them at greater threat of domestic violence and risky early pregnancies7. Without an education, child brides are less able to earn a safe and adequate income that would lift them and their families out of poverty. Furthermore the lack of power and decision-making autonomy 1 Center for Global Development, ‘Girls Count, A Global Investment and Action Agenda’, 2008 2 International Center for Research on Women, Too Young to Wed: Advocacy Toolkit’, 2006 3 Zambia: MDG progress report 2011, UNDP 4 The World Bank, ‘World Development Report 2012: Gender, Equality and Development’, Zambia DHS, 2010 5 Zambia DHS, 2010 6 Zambia DHS, 2010 7 National Bureau of Economic Research, ‘Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development’, 2011 Page 4 of 21 can have a significant influence on economic decisions – where women do have decision-making power and their priorities are reflected in how household resources are allocated, household expenditures on key areas such as education and health tend to be higher8. Ultimately, constraining women’s and girls’ voice and agency contributes to losses in productivity and has long-term effects for global development goals9. The Government of Zambia recognises this challenge, and in 2013 launched a national campaign to end child marriage, focusing on the role of traditional leaders and changes in laws and policies from local level up. In 2016, it developed a National Strategy on Ending Child Marriage (supported by UNFPA-UNICEF through the Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage) to guide this process. The strategy seeks to facilitate positive change in existing harmful social and gender norms in order to reduce the incidence of child marriage, and includes a clear focus on the central role of education and school-based interventions10. The UNFPA-UNICEF programme will continue its support to the Zambian government over the next 10 years, first focusing on the strengthening of institutions and systems and building a strong evidence base for effective interventions at scale, and later bringing in a broader number of key actors, to accelerate change and focus on strengthened political support, policies and frameworks. The timing of this UK Aid Match project is ideally positioned to feed into that evidence base to inform the second phase of the programme. While reform of the legal and policy framework is a necessary element of eliminating child marriage, multiple research studies11 have found that regulations and oversight need to be accompanied by an aware and supportive public as well as empowered children. Interventions to eradicate child marriage are most powerful when they deliver the following: empowering girls with information, skills and support networks; enhancing the accessibility and quality of formal schooling for girls; and offering economic support and incentives for girls and their families to keep girls in school or marry later12. Under this project CAMFED is working with and through existing government and civil society structures to tackle the demand and supply side problems in the education system that contribute to high levels of child marriage in the target districts. It is empowering educated young women through training, mentoring and access to finance, to provide