Skip to main content
Home
  • Data & Research
  • Publications
  • Findings & Impact
  • Search

  • Themes
  • Blog
  • About
  • News & Events
  • People
  • Countries

Home+
Themes+
Poverty & Inequality+
Inequality
Migration and mobility
Poverty and shocks
Social protection
Well-being and aspirations
Health & Nutrition+
Early childhood development
Malnutrition and cognitive development
Stunting and catch-up growth
Water and Sanitation
Education+
Early education
Low-fee private schooling
Low-fee private schooling
School effectiveness
Adolescence, Youth and Gender+
Gender
Marriage and parenthood
Child protection+
Children's work
Early marriage and FGM
Violence
Skills & Work
Blog
About
News & Events+
Events
Past events
Young Lives in the media
Our Research Films
Galleries
People+
Young Lives Associates
International Advisory Board
Research Partners
Countries

You are here

  • Home
  • Home
  • Publications
  • Gendered Trajectories of Young People through School, Work and Marriage in Ethiopia

Publications

  • Gendered Trajectories of Young People through School, Work and Marriage in Ethiopia

Share

 
Tweet
Email

Gendered Trajectories of Young People through School, Work and Marriage in Ethiopia

August, 2016
Yisak TafereNardos Chuta
  • Skills & Work
Young Lives Working Paper 155
PDF icon YL-WP155-Gendered-Trajectories-in-Ethiopia.pdf

Preview

This working paper examines how gender affects girls’ and boys’ school, work and marriage trajectories across adolescence and into early adulthood in Ethiopia. It explores when gender inequality begins to open up in childhood; in which domains, how and why gender disparities persist across adolescence and into early adulthood; and, finally, whether and how gendered norms, values and practices impact on children’s trajectories.

Drawing on quantitative and qualitative longitudinal data from Young Lives, gathered from children and their parents, we found that:

  • children developed high educational aspirations and tried hard to achieve them, though often with little success;
  • poverty, work, illness, family-related problems, and (for girls in particular) early marriage had cumulative negative impacts, eventually forcing them to leave school;
  • the transition to marriage affected young women and men differently, and getting married prior to finishing education curtailed the ambitions of some girls.

The findings challenge the normative understanding of ‘transitions’ by suggesting that they are neither clear-cut nor a one-off or one-way process. In Ethiopia, where poverty and social norms shape the majority of children’s lives, their trajectories appear to be interconnected and overlapping, rather than distinct pathways. Finally, the paper highlights some policy implications, calling for comprehensive child-focused social protection interventions to reduce the negative impacts of both poverty and gender on young people’s trajectories.

About

Our people
Our funders
Our research
Contact Young Lives

Newsletter signup

Where we work

  • Ethiopia
  • India
  • Peru
  • Vietnam

Our themes

  • Poverty & Inequality
  • Health & Nutrition
  • Education
  • Gender & Youth
  • Child Protection
  • Skills & Work

Oxford Department of  International Development (ODID)
University of Oxford,  Queen Elizabeth House
3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB, UK

Copyright 2019 Young Lives
|Privacy policy|Sitemap