Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Encouraging Students to discuss Gender Equality in the Classroom
In India, the gender gap begins at birth as the practice of sex-selective abortion is widespread. Among children 0-6 years old, there were 109 boys for every 100 girls according to a 2011 census. This inequality continues throughout a woman’s life, evidenced by the barriers she faces in receiving an education, accessing health care, participating in the labor force, and having full autonomy over marriage and childbirth. In this report for the
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, Diva Dhar, Tarun Jain, and Seema Jayachandran evaluate two years of interactive classroom discussions about gender equality in the state of Haryana, India. They conclude that the targeted programme resulted in more progressive gender attitudes as boys and girls changed their behaviours, but girls faced greater external constraints to enacting change. The program also changed students’ perceptions of social norms about women pursuing employment and university education.
https://www.povertyactionlab.org/sites/default/files/publications/reshaping-adolescents-gender-attitudes.pdf
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