Gender equality

Education is a fundamental human right, but for many children this right often goes unacknowledged – especially for girls. Large gender gaps exist in access to education, continuing education and learning achievement. More girls than boys remain out of school, and 16 million girls around the world will never attend school. Girls face many challenges in accessing education – including school-related gender-based violence, inadequate sanitation facilities, and teenage pregnancy and child marriage.

In the long-term education can break the cycle of poverty by improving gender equality. It also has many benefits for women and girls – including better health practices and healthcare and a higher earning potential. Education also empowers girls and women to know and fight for their rights and protect them from harmful gender practices.

Concern integrates our education programmes into both our development and emergency work, to give children living in extreme poverty more opportunities in life and supporting their overall well-being. Our education programmes are designed to be gender transformative and look at addressing the unique barriers to education faced by girls.

Focusing solely on empowering women and girls has limited results. Our research, and work on the ground, has proven that equality will never be achieved if men are not engaged, consulted and trained as allies and ambassadors. Concern’s 'Engaging Men' approach is a crucial aspect of our work on gender equality. Our plan is to implement this across all our country programmes.

In Malawi, our Graduation programme tested an innovative approach to engaging male and female spouses in a gender transformative dialogue – called Umodzi - aiming to improve gender equality and ultimately poverty related outcomes amongst programme participants.  Couples were encouraged to reflect upon and discuss issues such as gender norms, power, decision-making, budgeting, violence, positive parenting, and healthy relationships. Couples who had engaged in this process noted positive changes – including increased sharing of responsibilities, reduced arguments and improved intra-household relationships. These changes led to improved positive psychosocial wellbeing and collaboration for the participants.

In Bangladesh, the Engaging Men and Boys approach showed how community empowerment was key to breaking social stereotypes. Men were approached as allies, and trainings included discussions of sex, gender, forms of power, violence against women and positive parenting. These conversations enabled participants to get to the root causes and effects of gender inequality within their communities.

In Sierra Leone, harmful traditional gender norms are strongly embedded in communities and wider society. Women and young girls in Sierra Leone are at risk of gender-based violence, and many girls drop out of school. 

Concern implemented EAGER – Every Adolescent Girl Empowered and Resilient - in Sierra Leone for five years in consortium with International Rescue Committee, Restless Development and BBC Media Action. The programme aimed to improve literacy and numeracy, build life and business skills, and provide psychosocial support for out-of-school and marginalised adolescent girls.

The programme has benefitted over 32,000 girls in Sierra Leone, challenging the socio-cultural gender norms and prompting a shift in gender attitudes and practices among some of the most at-risk communities in Sierra Leone. Adolescent girls are now able to feel confident to use their skills to start small businesses and generate income.