THE PUGGLE:
Out in the bush, you’ll have to go into the pouch of a mama echidna to pet her baby puggle. Our Puggle is easier to find, showing up every month to share what we’re learning about emerging issues in girls’ education. Browse the archives below.
OUR APPROACH TO PHILANTHROPY:
We strive to be transparent, flexible, and rooted in trust. We are committed to listening and learning from our grantees and partners to iterate, streamline, and update our approach and processes. Browse posts about what we're learning and doing below.
RESOURCE LIBRARY:
We believe in exchanging ideas and sharing knowledge. Visit our Resource Library to see some of what we’ve been reading to inform our thinking on girls’ education.
EVIDENCE FOR GENDER AND EDUCATION RESOURCE (EGER):
For comprehensive and up-to-date information about evidence and actors in the girls' education sector visit egeresource.org.
Typically, we measure the success of girls’ education in terms of improvements in educational achievement (school completion rates, learning outcomes) and often through declines in child marriage and child pregnancy rates – proven life-altering outcomes that can be measured prior to the age of 18, before we consider girls to be women. These are critical outcomes, to be sure.
Such programming aligns with the growing field-level understanding that “empowerment is not simply a question of equipping adolescent girls with opportunities and resources, but also of ensuring that girls are able to exercise control over them.”
For girls to fully realize the benefits of their education as adult women, it is imperative that societies address entrenched gendered norms that place the responsibility of caregiving solely on females. Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Prize-winning research on the ‘motherhood penalty’ provides strong evidence for this:
In the U.S. context, Goldin shows that even with equal education, women are unable to participate equally in the labor force due to gendered care norms and practices. Following childbirth, women work ten fewer hours per week and make 40% less compared to fathers; meanwhile, men who become fathers start earning more.
In addition to immediately constraining women’s and girls’ equitable participation in gainful employment and education, gendered care practices have intergenerational impacts. Quantitative evidence from both higher income contexts and LMICs shows that when parents follow traditional gendered divisions of caregiving, their children are more likely to hold gendered beliefs as adults; but when parents distribute responsibilities such that fathers also contribute to childcare and housework, their children are more likely to hold egalitarian beliefs around gender as adults.
In isolation, publicly funded childcare cannot address the underlying inequitable norms that relegate most care work to females. But coupled with education to dismantle gendered stereotypes, we could begin to chip away at these constraints in a serious way.
In previousPuggles, we’ve highlighted the potential of Gender Transformative Education (GTE) to dismantle gendered stereotypes, norms, and practices that marginalize girls and women in broader society. The paragon of GTE in action is Breakthrough’s school-based work challenging regressive gender norms: Not only did the program cause sustained improvements in students’ gender progressiveness, but it also led to significant increases in the number of boys participating in household chore work – a noted strategy for raising boys who value & practice gender equity!
Typically, we measure the success of girls’ education in terms of improvements in educational achievement (school completion rates, learning outcomes) and often through declines in child marriage and child pregnancy rates – proven life-altering outcomes that can be measured prior to the age of 18, before we consider girls to be women. These are critical outcomes, to be sure.
Such programming aligns with the growing field-level understanding that “empowerment is not simply a question of equipping adolescent girls with opportunities and resources, but also of ensuring that girls are able to exercise control over them.”
For girls to fully realize the benefits of their education as adult women, it is imperative that societies address entrenched gendered norms that place the responsibility of caregiving solely on females. Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Prize-winning research on the ‘motherhood penalty’ provides strong evidence for this:
In the U.S. context, Goldin shows that even with equal education, women are unable to participate equally in the labor force due to gendered care norms and practices. Following childbirth, women work ten fewer hours per week and make 40% less compared to fathers; meanwhile, men who become fathers start earning more.
In addition to immediately constraining women’s and girls’ equitable participation in gainful employment and education, gendered care practices have intergenerational impacts. Quantitative evidence from both higher income contexts and LMICs shows that when parents follow traditional gendered divisions of caregiving, their children are more likely to hold gendered beliefs as adults; but when parents distribute responsibilities such that fathers also contribute to childcare and housework, their children are more likely to hold egalitarian beliefs around gender as adults.
In isolation, publicly funded childcare cannot address the underlying inequitable norms that relegate most care work to females. But coupled with education to dismantle gendered stereotypes, we could begin to chip away at these constraints in a serious way.
In previousPuggles, we’ve highlighted the potential of Gender Transformative Education (GTE) to dismantle gendered stereotypes, norms, and practices that marginalize girls and women in broader society. The paragon of GTE in action is Breakthrough’s school-based work challenging regressive gender norms: Not only did the program cause sustained improvements in students’ gender progressiveness, but it also led to significant increases in the number of boys participating in household chore work – a noted strategy for raising boys who value & practice gender equity!
We believe in exchanging ideas and sharing knowledge. Here’s some
of what we’ve been reading to inform our thinking on girls’ education.
Feel free to suggest additional resources for us to read and feature!