Adolescent boys and gendered social transitions: Findings from the Young Lives’

study in Ethiopia

Gina Crivello and Nikki van der Gaag

Development Studies Association ConferenceBath, 7-8 September 2015

Young Lives: a study of child poverty• An interdisciplinary study which aims to improve understanding of

the causes & consequences of childhood poverty and provide evidence to improve policies & practice.

• Following 12,000 children in 4 countries (Ethiopia, India-Andhra Pradesh, Telengana - Peru, Vietnam) over 15 years.

• Mixed method: survey data collection combined with longitudinal qualitative research with a nested sample.

• Pro-poor sample: 20 sites in each country selected to reflect country diversity, rural-urban, livelihoods, ethnicity, etc; roughly equal numbers of boys and girls.

• Two age cohorts in each country followed through surveys:

o 2,000 children born in 2000-01

o 1,000 children born in 1994-95

Young Lives study sites in Ethiopia

Our research questionsThe paper contributes to a broader stream of work within Young Lives, tracing boys’ and girls’ lives as they grow up, their differing outcomes and experiences in poverty, and when and whether their trajectories diverge.

The paper seeks to understand:

• What affects boys’ trajectories through school and work, including their aspirations, agency, place, and changing roles and responsibilities within family and community contexts?

• What obstacles do adolescent boys face as they seek to transition into young adults?

Adolescence – and boys

• In recent years, adolescence has risen high on the global agenda, but boys are marginalized by an overwhelming focus on girls.

• In relation to social norms and expectations there has been much focus on the harms that social norms cause for girls’ wellbeing, but what it means to be a boy in any given time and place is also socially constructed and dynamic.

• We will show how boys too can be disadvantaged by sexual stereotypes, social norms and economic adversity,

• We will also show how gender norms become more entrenched as adolescents develop into young adults.

Ethiopia• Despite international commitments and economic growth,

almost 40 per cent of Ethiopians survive on less than $1.25 a day. One child in eight still dies before their 5th birthday.

• The Government of Ethiopia is committed to improving opportunities for young people and has written these commitments into strategies and policies aimed at youth.

• The Government is also committed to promoting gender equality and the gender gap has been reducing. But in 2014 the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) still ranked Ethiopia 173rd out of 186 countries (UNDP Human Development Report). There are still high levels of early marriage for girls.

ASPIRATIONS AND IMAGINED FUTURES

Aspirations: High hopes• When we interviewed the young people at the age of 12 (in 2006),

the education aspirations of all children were high (slightly higher for boys).

• They said they wanted to go to university, to be a civil servant, a doctor, a mechanic, a teacher, an engineer, or run their own small business. Many of the boys also wanted to be famous football players.

• Assuming no constraints and that they would be able to stay on in school as long as they wished, 56% of the boys and 44% of the girls had said they would like to go to university.

• Aged 19, 66% of girls but only 54% of boys said they wanted to be professionals.

• Very few wanted to be farmers like their parents. – 10% of rural boys and 5% of rural girls aspired to be farmers

• Many parents have little formal education, and see education as the route out of poverty for the next generation.

How do aspirations evolve over time?

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• In a seven year window (age 12-19), aspirations change significantly.

• Children revise aspirations upward but only by a few years of schooling, mostly from secondary and pre-university study to university degree.

• Boys’ aspirations decrease over time while girls’ aspirations increase, particularly after age 15.

(Source: M. Favara, ‘Do dreams come true? Aspirations and educational attainments of Ethiopian boys and girls’, forthcoming)

Aspirations: ‘All the gain is toiling’

• Boys’ aspirations decrease over time while girls’ aspirations increase, particularly after age 15. Now that the boys are 19/20, very few of them have even come close to achieving their childhood dreams. Many say they feel a sense of hopelessness and even failure, having worked hard but finding themselves still unable to make a living, provide for their families or even contemplate being able to afford marriage. Young urban men more desperate than their rural peers.

• “You start feeling the challenges when you get older. It is nothing good to stay here without anything. Youngsters in the area have been hopeless and have been engaged in theft and other illegal acts and even worse than this, largely because there are no appropriate jobs. If [a boy’s] life is not changing from day to day and if he does not do anything to boost his morale, he starts to lead a hopeless life. He starts to say ‘there will be no change’ whether he lives today or tomorrow and that all the gain is toiling.” (Bereket)

Miki’s story: “Working hard but not changing your life”

• Miki comes from a neighbourhood in Addis Ababa. He has been brought up by his grandmother. As a boy he enjoyed doing the housework and wanted to be an engineer.

• However, when his father was sick (and subsequently died) his teacher refused to let him go back to school. Despite this, at 15, Miki said “I have become a mature and disciplined person. I reconcile individuals when they quarrel.”

• He wanted to start a small business selling eggs but could not get a loan. He ended up migrating to Sudan and became involved in smuggling and contraband. He suffered a lot of violence and was robbed.

• Now he sees no way out. He says that poverty is: “Working hard but not changing your life.”

• He would like to go back to school – “but how can I go to school in the desert?”

• The only positive thing in his life is his girlfriend who he says looks after him. He misses his grandmother.

SCHOOLING AND WORK

Schooling outcomes• At age 19, 59% of the Older Cohort were still in education (Round 4

Survey)

• More boys than girls had left school, more young people from rural areas or from the poorest households.

• 66% of girls were still in education, compared with 56% of boys, and the girls had, on average completed slightly higher levels of schooling than the boys.

• Of the older cohort, 58.6% of boys are overage for grade in school compared with only 11.3% of girls.

• Although increasing numbers of children are accessing schools, the quality of schooling is often poor.

• Children struggle to balance the demands of schooling with their family and work responsibilities, and schools are not always flexible to their needs.

Children’s experiences • Children’s education is often interrupted because of economic

shocks and adverse events such as drought, family illness or death, or because they were needed to care for siblings or other family members.

• Boys have greater access to paid work outside the household, in rural areas they are needed for herding, and over time the opportunity costs of their staying in school increase.

• There is a notable problem with school re-enrollment even only after several days of absence (e.g., due to work demands or to family illness). Nonetheless, boys’ trajectories in relation to school appear especially erratic, leaving and returning, and even after long periods of absence, there is often a wish (and sometimes a plan) to re-enrol.

• The schooling trajectories of children in urban areas are much more linear than the schooling trajectories of children in rural areas.

• As boys grow older, the relevance and benefits of schooling are increasingly questioned, and there is growing ambivalence.

‘Tufa’ – ‘Since I am the only boy in the family…’‘TUFA’ – aged 19, rural Leki

He left school in Grade 2 to seek paid work following his father’s imprisonment having been accused of stealing from the private farm he was paid to guard:

‘Following his imprisonment, I was forced to substitute for him and run the family. Since I am the only boy in the family and my family is poor, I was forced to drop out of school and engage in paid work to sustain the life of my family. I was hired to herd cattle for one of the households in the community, in order to feed my family.’ (Age 16)

Age 16, he was still in Grade 2, while his younger sister attended Grade 5. Another reason for this grade difference is because Tufa enrolled late in school, because his parents needed his assistance in herding, farming, and PSNP (productive safety net program) works. Once having finally enrolled in school, Tufa had to leave his school twice because of his father’s imprisonment – something which made him unhappy because he fell ‘behind his friends’.

Age 19, Tufa regrets having dropped out of school but he feels he cannot return since he would be among small children in Grade 2. He hopes to work on irrigation works, start his own vegetable business and his uncle serves as his role model.

BOYS’ TRAJECTORIES THROUGH WORK

Boys’ and young men’s trajectories through work• Both boys and girls

– start working from a young age, sometimes before enrolling in school

– carry out unpaid work for their households– combine school and work across childhood– experience transitions that do not conform to a linear model

• Work becomes increasingly gendered as children grow older, but other factors like sibling birth order and household composition also matter. – Girls are more responsible for domestic work (rural and urban

areas)– Boys are responsible for herding (rural areas)– Girls replace mothers in work, boys replace fathers, although this

is flexible.

‘My mother is tiliq sew (literally ‘a big person’). She does not feel good going house to house to sell the ‘fool’ [beans], so me and my sister do this part of the work. We collect the money and hand it over to her.’ (Rashida, 10 years-old, Hawassa, sells beans)

 

 

Boys’ and young men’s trajectories through work• Sometimes boys take on work that is not appropriate for their age or

gender, and this can be a source of shame for them, but they still perform the task due to strong sense of responsibility and duty to family and parents.– Defar, aged 12, was the eldest of three children. His sister was too little to help, so when his

mother was busy with other work, Defar had to do the cooking and fetch water, which he disliked and was embarrassed to do because he considered this to be girls’ and women’s work. Not having an older sister or one who was close in age meant Defar had to take on tasks normally associated with females. (see Porter and Heissler 2011)

• Boys’ attitudes towards work reflect economic need and also strong interdependent relations within households.

• Boys feel the pressure to support their families through paid work, however hard or difficult it is.

• Although some of them have girlfriends, the majority insist that marrying and starting a family are possible only after securing a livelihood – which many of them do not have.

• 13% of the girls in our sample were married and two-thirds of them had already had a baby by the age of 19 (10% of the total sample), compared to only 1% of the boys who were married and 2% who had fathered a child.

Boys becoming men • Securing paid work is key to boys’ transitions to adulthood, and at

age 19, they strive for financial independence.

• See themselves as ‘in-between’ childhood and adulthood – a growing sense of responsibility and maturity, yet lacking adult authority and access to adult networks.

• Young men are frustrated by lack of jobs and ambivalent about schooling but often cling to the hope of returning to school even after several years’ gap.

• While young men in rural areas leave school earlier than their urban peers, they seem to be more hopeful, positive and have aspirations for future, oriented towards improving their farming (irrigation, land).

• Boys and young men considered paid work a protective factor in the sense that working prevents idleness and stagnation which they feared and resisted.

• Focusing much less on the promises of education, for boys becoming men, work promises ‘change’ and represents persistence, hope and moral fortitude. But the reality of work is usually very different; a continual struggle to provide enough for themselves, their families, and their futures.

Policy Implications

Policy implications (1)Our research highlights key opportunities for policymakers to provide support to adolescents and their families:

• Policy and programming with adolescents at present is largely focused on girls, with only a few programmes on boys. How can a more gendered approach be taken that will benefit both sexes?

• It is clear from our research that poverty and gender interact with other factors such as location (rural or urban), class, ethnicity, religion, age, birth order. How can policymakers use this evidence in order to design more inclusive programmes?

• We have shown just how much both boys and girls value education. What policies can be put in place to ensure that both boys and girls stay in school? eg more relevant and higher-quality education, more flexible school hours, finding ways of supporting boys to return to school, and creating a school environment that is safer and more appropriate for both adolescent girls and boys.

Policy implications (2)• We have seen that young men in particular feel pressure to

support their families, without the possibility of doing so. Disillusionment with school, combined with poverty, result in disillusionment in a context where even poor quality work seems the better alternative to education yet does little to break intergenerational poverty. How can a better match be created between education and skills and job opportunities?

• Further gendered research and more evidence and data is

needed on both boys and girls and the relationships between them in order to understand gender differences and to improve the lives of these children and help to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

www.younglives.org.uk• methodology and research papers• datasets (UK Data Archive)• publications• child profiles • e-newsletter

FINDING OUT MORE

AcknowledgementsYoung Lives children, parents/caregivers and other research participants, including the Ethiopian research teams.

We received excellent research assistance from Ina Zharkevich, Jen Roest and Bridget Azubuike, and comments from Kirrily Pells.

Funders: DFID, DGIS, Hewlett Foundation, IrishAid, Oak Foundation, Bernard Van Leer Foundation.

Thank You