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Evidence of Sustainable Norm Change

Part 2: Data Collected by Council for Social Development



The Hyderabad chapter of the Council for Social Development (CSD) published a research report in 2023 entitled “A Study of MV Foundations’s Intervention: Gender Equality and Adolescent Girls’ Education”. This report offers an independent validation for the evidence of norm change in the adolescent girls’ programme and forms a sequel to the information collected by MVF Field Mobilizers.

CSD collected data from 19 programme villages across 3 districts as well as from a control group of 10 villages across 4 districts to provide a comparative framework for impact assessment. The aim of the study was to understand the transformation brought about by the MVF intervention during 2015-2019 in the lives of adolescent girls before the Covid pandemic, and to assess any reversal of gains in relation to gender discrimination in the family, community, and public spaces during the lockdowns. The study found significant differences in the situation of girls between the programme and control villages on a variety of variables including the status of girls in the family, in school and in the community and in resisting early marriage. Some data from this report is presented below.


Consumption of food, and girls’ mobility constitute two important markers of gender discrimination within the family. Regarding consumption of food (in terms of girls eating last, getting smaller portions of special dishes, and being consulted about what to cook), 44% percent of respondents in the project area reported that there was discrimination against girls in the pre- intervention period. However, after the intervention this came down to 4.1%. An important observation is that the pandemic did not result in any perceptible negative impact. In the control group, 64.2% reported discrimination against girls and this did not change substantially during the pandemic.


Girls’ mobility has also shown remarkable improvements in the project area. Only 7% of girls were allowed to move around freely outside the home prior to the intervention. This improved significantly to 96% post intervention and was not negatively impacted by Covid. In the control group, 75.3% of girls reported restrictions on their movements outside the house pre-, and during, Covid Similar improvements and differences with the control group can be observed with regard to the allotment of time given to girls as opposed to boys for study and play and for decision-making within the family.


The gender-awareness activities conducted by MVF with families, in schools and in the community have resulted in positive changes in the attitude of parents, schools and the community towards adolescent girls. As many as 73.2% of parents said that they now see boys and girls as equals; 99.6% allow their daughters to attend the adolescent girls’ meetings and think that girls’ empowerment is good. The parents acknowledge that girls can now talk freely and without fear, they are taking on challenges, competing equally with boys and openly discussing issues of physical and sexual harassment and abuse. Regarding early marriage, the girls stated that earlier they had not been in a position to oppose parental decisions about their marriage and were forced to succumb to the will of their parents; only 2% reported that such discussions had taken place. Post intervention, 64% of respondents reported that there was a discussion about their marriage, but they could oppose their parents and continue their education. In 40% of these cases the parents respected the girls wishes, while the remaining sought the help of MVF mobilisers, teachers, anganwadi workers, police, Childline, the KBS and the Village Panchayat to intervene in the matter of their early marriage. During Covid, adolescent girls came under enormous pressure to get married, but they could take the help of KBS and MVF mobilisers to convince their parents otherwise. Significantly, 47% of girls actively contributed to stopping other marriages during the pandemic by informing people who could help these girls. The girls in the control group had no such support and had to give in to early marriage.


Schools are another major arena were MVF works to combat gender discrimination. Before MVFs intervention, 94.4% of girls reported experiencing discriminatory behaviour from teachers; this went down significantly to 5.6% post intervention and did not change as a result of Covid. In the control group, however, 76.5% reported discrimination pre covid and the figure did not change much at 74.1% during Covid. School enrolments for adolescent girls also showed improvements. While the majority of girls in the project area were reported to be enrolled in schools in the pre intervention period, 40% of these were in fact not attending school regularly as they were helping with domestic chores or were engaged in wage labour. This figure went down to 10% after the intervention. On the other hand, in the non-project area 91.4% of total respondents reported they were enrolled in school, but 50% of these stated they were unable to attend school regularly in the pre-Covid period.


Responses were also collected from various members of the community to assess their attitudes towards adolescent girls. This report clearly shows positive improvements in attitudes in favour of girls in the post-intervention period. More than half the respondents stated that it is the girls’ choice what clothes they wear, a significant 95% agreed that there was no problem about boys and girls playing sports together and a similar number (90%) agreed that activities conducted for girls’ empowerment were working. The contrast with the control group could not be more stark; here, the majority of respondents said that it was not acceptable for girls to wear modern dresses and 75% felt that it was good for boys and girls to maintain distance and not play games together.


The evidence from the CSD report confirms two findings: first, that the MVF villages posted far better outcomes for adolescent girls than what was observed in the control villages; and second, that these gains in the MVF villages were sustained despite the constraints and impositions of the Covid pandemic and its lockdowns. These positive outcomes can be explained by the collective power of the effective and multi-layered gender norm-change strategies implemented by the MV Foundation under the Ika Chaalu project.





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