The Challenge of Building the Social and Economic Assets of Vulnerable Adolescent Girls Emphasis on

1
The Challenge of Building the Social and Economic
Assets of Vulnerable Adolescent GirlsEmphasis on
Sub-Saharan Africa

• Judith Bruce and Kelly Hallman
• Population Council
• November 13, 2006
• Global Microcredit Summit
• Halifax, Nova Scotia
• Prepared by Virginia Kallianes and Jill Benson

2
Outline

• The internal diversity of vulnerable adolescent
  girls. Factors that condition their access to
  financial services
• Age
• Living arrangements
• Schooling status
• Social participation, density of friendship
  networks
• Economic status and vision
• Lifecycle sexual, marital, childbearing status
• Context levels of poverty safety in their
  communities
• What can we learn from work with other
  populations who are highly vulnerable?
• General propositions about design

3
Vulnerable girls (and girls in general) are in
rapid transition What happens around age 12 is
critical

• Sexual maturation
• Consolidation of gender norms, including
  regarding gender-based violence
• Changes in the family (e.g., parents marital
  dissolution)
• Withdrawal from and/or lack of safety in the
  public space
• School leaving or school safety
• Loss of peers
• Migration for work (often informal and/or unsafe)
  both boys girls
• Subject to sexualizing consumerist media
• Rising need for independent disposable income
  assets
• Pressure for marriage or liaisons as livelihoods
  strategies

4
Transitions in living arrangements may increase
girls need to support themselves and place them
at substantial risk The majority of girls 10-14
living in urban areas of sub-Saharan African
(PEPFAR) countries are living with only one or no
parent in some settings 10 or more are living
with neither parent and not in school
Tabulations by Erica Chong, Population Council,
DHS data, 1992-2001
5
Case study Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

• Living arrangements
• Living with 2 parents 37
• Living with 1 parent 34
• Living with no parent 29
• Orphaned (all causes) 30
• Maternal orphans 6
• Paternal orphans 21
• Double orphans 3
• Resides in AIDS-affected household 32
• Source Hallman, 2004 Pettifor et al., 2004

Case Study Durban and environs, KwaZulu-Natal,
South Africa 14-24 year olds 2,194 girls
1,980 boys HIV rates in South Africa in informal
urban settlements Females 26.58 Males 8.23
31
6
Across wealth statuses, girls have thinner
friendship networks than boys, placing them at
greater risk for coerced sex
Case study Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Source Hallman and Diers 2004
7
Schooling even of poor quality, where girls are
not at grade for age improves a range of
reproductive health scenarios (delayed sexual
debut, more protected, voluntary sexual
relations, lower rates of pregnancy) (Lloyd,
2005)
Case study Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

• In the South Africa case, low school enrollment
  increases the possibility of physically-forced
  encounters.

Source Hallman and Grant, 2004
8
Low wealth and being an orphan raises the risk of
economically motivated exchanges for gifts,
money, or shelter
Case study Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Ever traded sex Sexually experienced females
ages 14-16
Source Hallman, 2004
9
Context matters But even among adolescent girls
boys co-residing in the same communities (even
households), females are more socially
marginalized, are less knowledgeable about their
rights and entitlements, are less realistic about
their risks, and have a more fragile vision of
their future
Case study Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

• SES Social Capital
• Females reside in more impoverished households
  than males do.
• Females have lower social capital than males
  (measured by involvement in community
  organizations).
• Low SES education correlate with low female but
  not male social capital.
• Financial Literacy/Behaviors
• Even though they are eligible for more social
  grants than males, females have less knowledge of
  social grants than males.
• Only one-third of females have a financial goal,
  versus one-half of males.
• HIV/RH Knowledge and Perceptions
• Females have less knowledge than males of HIV
  transmission modes.
• Females perceive themselves to be at lower risk
  for contracting HIV than do males, despite a
  female-to-male youth incidence ratio of 8 to 1 in
  South Africa.
• Only 4 of male or female respondents can
  correctly name the time in a womans cycle when
  she can become pregnant.

Kelly Hallman, Kasthuri Govender, Nick Swan,
Emmanuel Mbatha, and Jill Walsh. 2006.
Expanding Social Capital, Financial Literacy,
and HIV/AIDS Knowledge Among Disadvantaged Young
People in South Africa, paper submitted for
presentation at Population Association of America
2007 Annual Meeting, New York, NY.
10
Context matters But even in threatening
neighborhoods, boys usually have safe places to
gather with each other (though often nothing good
is going on there), however girls do not have
such an opportunity
In a recent exercise in Kibera, Kenya, less than
1 of the 96,000 girls (10-19) had access to a
safe, girl-only space for two hours a week. Such
a space offers girls social support, friendship
networks which are potentially protective, a
rudimentary safety net, and can serve as a venue
for asset-building and microfinance programs.
Source Karen Austrian, Caroline Sakwa. 2006.
Defining Girls Unmet Needs for Safet Binti
Pamoja Center, presentation.
11
Individually and collectively, these factors are
potentially strong barriers to girls access to
financial services. These girls

• Are socially isolated with few friends, places to
  meet
• Lack schooling and other asset-building
  opportunities
• Lack safety nets (places to stay or access to
  resources in emergencies)
• Have few and dangerous livelihood opportunities
• Have limited or absent family support
• Are vulnerable to forced sexual relations, and/or
  economically driven exchanges of sex for gifts,
  money, and shelter
• Are under pressure for unsafe relationships,
  work, and survival liaisons, or marriages
• Reside in threatening environments which
  undermine their mobility, time flexibility, and
  livelihood choices
• Are in rapid transition in their bodies, living
  arrangements, sexual lives, risk scenarios

12
II. What we can learn from work with other
populations who are highly vulnerable?
13
Reflecting on who these girls are like
14
Reflecting on who these girls are like
15
Girls and savings Learning from other programs

• Girls of all ages are interested in savings.
• Even the poorest girls have access to money by
  way of wages or gifts.
• Where they do have formal savings (certainly a
  minority of cases) it is often in a relatively
  passive role as a co-signer without control or
  vision for use of the savings (or the credit).
• The youngest girls even where laws allow
  individual accounts at age
• 10 have limited access as individuals and
  cannot establish accounts without some sort of
  social mediation (going as a group, with an adult
  mentor, for example).
• Older girls with rudimentary support can
  establish savings accounts as a positive
  empowering experience where they have control, a
  sense of identity as an economic actor, and a new
  practical tool which reduces their risks and
  expands their opportunities.
• The value of savings is greatly enhanced as part
  of an overall strategy of social support and
  mobilization of girls and savings options are
  ideally offered with some financial literacy
  preparation.

16
Girls social capital, financial goals, and
protective behaviors appear to be linked
Case study Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

• Social Capital and HIV Knowledge/Behaviors
• Females who were more involved in community
  organizations had much higher exposure to
  media-based HIV/AIDS messages in the month before
  the survey.
• Females and males with greater community
  involvement were more likely to discuss avoiding
  HIV with their most recent sexual partner.
• Females who report having more friends were more
  likely to have had an HIV test.
• Females who had someone to borrow money or food
  from in times of crisis were less likely to have
  had multiple sexual partners in the year before
  the survey.
• Financial Literacy/Behaviors and HIV
  Knowledge/Behaviors
• Females who had financial goals or who were
  saving had much higher exposure to media-based
  HIV/AIDS messages in the month before the survey.
• Among females, those who had a financial goal
  and/or used a financial service in the year
  before the survey were more likely to perceive
  themselves at risk for HIV.
• Female and male respondents who had a financial
  goal were more aware of HIV transmission modes
  than those without a financial goal.

Kelly Hallman, Kasthuri Govender, Nick Swan,
Emmanuel Mbatha, and Jill Walsh. 2006.
Expanding Social Capital, Financial Literacy,
and HIV/AIDS Knowledge Among Disadvantaged Young
People in South Africa, paper submitted for
presentation at Population Association of America
2007 Annual Meeting, New York, NY.
17
III. General propositions about design

• Microcredit programs designed for adults need
  careful adaptation for poor adolescent girls
  age-, gender-, lifecycle- (e.g. sexual activity,
  marital, and childbearing status), and
  context-specific (including region of world)
• Microcredit programs for adolescents should
  follow a staged, step-wise model, beginning with
  building social capital, education, training,
  savings, and, when a solid base is established,
  then moving up to credit
• The girl participant should be an active part in
  determining her own readiness for loans based on
  stages of program experience

Source Erulkar, Annabel S. and Erica Chong.
2005. Evaluation of a Savings and Micro-Credit
Program for Vulnerable Young Women in Nairobi.
Nairobi, Kenya Population Council. Hallman,
Bruce, Austrian, Chong, Maternowska, Roley.
Adolescent Girls Social Support and Livelihood
Program Design Workshop. Summary of Notes,
Population Council and University of
California-San Francisco, workshop in Nairobi,
Kenya, March 22-23, 2006.
18
Thank You!