Title: Building a youth focused conceptualisation of “empowerment” with adolescent girls within the context of sexual and reproductive health: a qualitative study in Nigeria and Tanzania

Abstract Information: Gender equality and empowerment are essential for global progress (UN 2019) and form a key aspect of many international development programmes aimed at adolescent girls and young women. But what empowerment is and how best to support its achievement is open to debate. Theoretical framings of empowerment are often developed without consultation with those who are the target of programming. This study sought to build a girl centred definition of empowerment with girls who have been involved in the Population Services International family planning programme Adolescent 360 Amplify. This observational qualitative study conducted in Northern and Southern Nigeria and Tanzania, used 13 focus group discussions with 60 female adolescents and 23 key informant interviews. The girls constructed diverse perceptions of what empowerment means to them. Definitions were influenced by the environmental and cultural contexts girls live in and often woven around financial freedom and the ability to generate wealth and shaped by the limits on their capability, like poverty, confidence and education. Respondents perceived their ability to get ‘empowered’ as facilitated or limited by stakeholders like parents, husband, friends and peers. Contextual factors such as marital status and emotional relationships were perceived as possible barriers to girls’ empowerment.

Relevance Statement: Achieving gender equality is essential for global progress and facilitating women’s empowerment is a key mechanism towards greater equality. International development programmes increasingly seek to achieve outcomes related to empowerment especially in the context of sexual and reproductive health programs . Yet programme designers and evaluators are faced with the challenge of understanding how empowerment happens and how to measure and understand it. The exposure to different socioeconomic and cultural circumstances of women at the household and community levels may impact their perspectives about their empowerment needs. It is this idea of heterogeneity and individualism that has inspired the development of an individual level definition of empowerment using qualitative research methods. The aim of the research was to build a working definition of empowerment wholly informed by the perspectives of girls with low socioeconomic status resident in Tanzania and Nigeria. This paper emphasizes the need for an individual level definition of empowerment since women are not a homogenous group.

The data shows no consistent causal story for how a girl becomes empowered or stays empowered. We established that familiar qualitative methods can be effective in unpacking the complex theme of empowerment for adolescent girls and young women. The importance given to economic empowerment is consistent with the literature which identifies the importance of financial stability in enabling resilience, giving women bargaining power within and outside the household and how access and participate in the labour force contributes to a woman’s ability to access resources and therefore exercise agency.

In developing empowerment indicators for promoting effective and holistic SRHR programming for girls some implications to consider include: (1)being aware of the spectrum of factors that shape girls’ empowerment goals, (2)girls’ capabilities and contexts shape their ability to achieve the goals they set and thus, indicators should be developed to illustrate this subjectivity, (3) indicators can reflect how a program facilitates girls to make choices and decisions and to achieve their goals, (4)to be effective, programs may also involve working with the people that girls view as the gatekeepers to their empowerment (male partners, husbands, families).