Stand with girls for gender equality in education

Barriers to Education

• Stressful home environments: With children at home, job losses and other pressures, home environments were not always safe or supportive learning environments for adolescent girls. Girls felt unsupported in remote learning due to parents who were struggling to understand the technology, who themselves have low education levels or who were experiencing high levels of stress due to the pandemic and its consequences. This led to household conflict and a home environment not conducive to girls’ learning.
• Decline in mental and emotional well-being: The pandemic has had significant impacts on the well-being of adolescent girls, which in turn has made it difficult for girls to continue with their education. Girls said they struggled to learn due to the psychosocial impacts of the pandemic and the stress of learning from home. Girls spoke of the significant stress and pressure of preparing for exams despite the disrupted curriculum, their concerns about the future and their ability to finish schooling and find employment.
• Quality and delivery of remote learning: Remote learning has posed serious disruptions to adolescent girls’ ability to access and complete secondary education. Adolescent girls found that learning was made particularly difficult due to changes to the curriculum, inconsistency in teaching styles and abilities, the difficulty to maintain concentration and motivation, and a lack of access to on site facilities.
• Unequal access to technology and devices: Girls struggled to access the internet for online classes due to unstable internet connections, low connectivity (particularly outside of cities) and the high costs of data. Girls also experienced a lack of devices (such as laptops) available in the family home or limited access to devices that were shared between family members or that were used only by male family members.
• Increased risk of gender-based violence: With learning shifting from schools to adolescent girls’ homes and online over the last 12 months, girls expressed concerns regarding online and offline violence. The pandemic exposed the unique nature of online harassment and abuse that girls experience and the need to create safe spaces for them both online and offline for girls to enable girls to learn without fear.
• Adolescent girls’ education is not a priority: The disruptions of the last year has further entrenched the gendered norms and expectations that education is of limited value to girls. The research found that girls’ families and communities did not place value on girls’ education – instead considering marriage or work to be more financially viable options. In some instances girls themselves felt this way.
• Child, early and forced marriage and unions (CEFM): The research found that countries such as Indonesia are seeing an upward trend in CEFM both anecdotally and in some of the data, despite Indonesian law restricting marriage before the age of 19. If CEFM continues to increase in the region, it will pose serious barriers to girls being able to continue their education.
• Economic impacts: Loss of income as a result of the pandemic and the number of households that were predicted to drop below the poverty line in the Pacific made the financial impact of COVID-19 one of the most significant risks to a girl’s education.