Girl Effect
Developing a culturally grounded understanding of girls’ agency in Rwanda to guide responsible program development.
The Challenge
Girl Effect is an NGO dedicated to challenging discriminatory gender norms in the developing world to positively change how girls are viewed and valued in their societies. Girl Effect pursues its mission through the development of locally distributed media including magazines, radio programmes and events targeted at girls and their communities, to help positively shift social attitudes and opportunities for girls.
In recent years, Girl Effect had been criticized for basing its assumptions about girls’ lives too heavily on Western gender discourse and too little on robust knowledge of local cultures. To address this, Girl Effect needed to develop a more locally grounded understanding of girls’ lives to inform its work in Rwanda, and better align its activities there with local cultural and social contexts.
What We Did
Girl Effect’s program strategy is guided by the premise that opportunities for positive change for girls will be enhanced if girls’ agency – their ability to make decisions and take action in their lives – is increased. Based on this, we developed an ethnographic research agenda to investigate the nature of girls’ agency in Rwanda, the local cultural values defining its expression, and the boundaries within which it is exercised.
We traveled to Rwanda to engage in depth interviews with local girls, boys, mothers, fathers and community leaders in the capital city of Kigali and in a remote rural village. Our research explored girls’ school, community, work, social and domestic lives, and investigated local cultural notions of girlhood. Findings were analysed to develop a framework describing girls’ agentic practice in Rwanda in the context of local cultural models of identity and social interaction.
Result
Research analysis identified key cultural drivers shaping the boundaries within which Rwandan girls can make decisions and navigate their everyday lives, relationships, and aspirations for the future. Crucially, our findings provided Girl Effect with a more nuanced view of Rwandan culture, to guide their program strategy in a more locally informed and responsible way.
consulted together with: KYSD