Gender Justice And Social Norms – Processes Of Change For Adolescent Girls

This note proposes an analytical framework for the current phase of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) programme of research on discriminatory social norms affecting adolescent girls. The current phase of this programme(2013-14) involves fieldwork in Ethiopia, Nepal, Uganda and Vietnam that explores change and continuity in norms related to education and early marriage, and a systematic-style review of the impact of communication and media activities on a wider set of discriminatory gender norms affecting adolescent girls. This phase is moving from an overview of how social institutions and other factors affect a variety of capabilities of adolescent girls towards a sharper focus on how discriminatory gender norms change or persist. It will draw on the literatures on capabilities and gender justice, as integrated by the project in Year 1, on recent analysis of social norms and the processes through which they are held in place or change, on feminist analyses of the processes and structures that maintain gender inequality and on analysis of the structural drivers of change in gender norms and relations.