Peer-reviewed article

Gender-equitable caregiver attitudes and education and safety of adolescent girls in South Kivu, DRC: A secondary analysis from a randomized controlled trial

Ilana Seff, Kathryn Falb, Gary Yu, Debbie Landis, Lindsay Stark · 28 Sept 2021

Summary

Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001

This study examined whether caregivers' gender-equitable attitudes are associated with better schooling and safety outcomes for adolescent girls aged 10-14 in South Kivu, DRC. Data from 732 girls and their caregivers were collected at baseline and one year later. Girls whose caregivers developed more gender-equitable attitudes were significantly more likely to improve their schooling participation and showed marginal declines in physical violence victimization. The findings suggest that working with caregivers to shift their gender attitudes may support girls' education and safety in conflict-affected settings.

Key points

Increase in caregivers' gender-equitable attitude scores was associated with significantly greater odds of girls experiencing improvement in schooling participation (aOR = 1.08, p = 0.036)
Marginal association found between improved caregiver attitudes and decline in physical violence victimization for girls (aOR = 1.07, p = 0.092)
Older girls (13-14 years) had lower odds of experiencing improvements in schooling and reductions in all forms of violence compared to younger girls
Study measured caregiver attitudes using 10 survey questions and tracked changes over 16-month period
No significant associations were found for sexual violence, emotional violence, or feeling uncared for

Limitations

The study relied on self-reported outcomes from both caregivers and girls, and used single questionnaire items to measure some outcomes, which may introduce measurement error. The analysis cannot establish causation and potential self-selection bias may have influenced results.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Adolescent girls face myriad threats to their well-being and safety as a result of gender-inequitable attitudes and norms, and these risks are often exacerbated during humanitarian emergencies. While humanitarian actors have begun to address caregivers' behaviors and gender attitudes as an approach to support and meet the needs of adolescent girls, best practices for working with caregivers to improve adolescent girls' well-being in these settings have yet to be identified. METHODS AND FINDINGS: This study uses panel data from a program evaluation to analyze associations between changes in gender-equitable attitudes among caregivers and changes in schooling and violence victimization for girls ages 10 to 14 years old in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Participants were recruited in May 2015 for baseline (May to July 2015) and endline (August to October 2016) data collection. Baseline and endline data for both caregivers and girls were available for 732 girls. The average ages of adolescents and caregivers were 12 and 40.7, respectively, and 92% of caregivers were female. The predictor of interest was the change in caregivers' gender-equitable attitudes between the 2 points in time, where attitudes were measured using 10 underlying survey questions. The primary outcomes of interest were dichotomous and included improvement in schooling participation and declines in physical, sexual, and emotional violence and feeling uncared for. Logistic regression was used to estimate the association between changes in caregivers' attitudes and 5 outcomes of interest and revealed that an increase in a caregiver's gender-equitable attitude score was associated with significantly greater odds of a girl experiencing an improvement in schooling participation (aOR = 1.08, CI [1.005, 1.154], p = 0.036) and of a girl experiencing a marginal decline in physical violence victimization (aOR = 1.07, CI [0.989, 1.158], p = 0.092). Analyses also revealed that older girls had lower odds of experiencing an improvement in schooling participation (aOR = 0.77, CI [0.686, 0.861], p < 0.001), physical violence (aOR = 0.86, CI [0.757, 0.984], p = 0.028), sexual violence (aOR = 0.86, CI [0.743, 1.003], p = 0.055), or emotional violence (aOR = 0.98, CI [0.849, 1.105], p = 0.005). Important limitations in this study include the self-reported nature of outcomes, use of single questionnaire items to construct the outcome variables, and potential self-selection bias. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that supporting caregivers to increase gender equitable attitudes may be associated with benefits in dual outcomes of education and safety for adolescent girls in eastern DRC. Further research is needed to better understand how to induce a shift in these attitudes in multisectoral programming. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02384642.

Findings the Hub has extracted

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DevelopmentProtectionParticipation

Problem

Adolescent girls in eastern DRC face threats to their well-being and safety from gender-inequitable attitudes and norms held by caregivers, particularly in humanitarian emergency contexts

Intervention: Programmatic engagement with caregivers to shift gender-equitable attitudes
Population: 732 girls aged 10-14 years and their caregivers (92% female) in South Kivu, DRC; baseline mean caregiver age 40.7 years

Key finding

Each one-point increase in caregiver gender-equitable attitude score associated with 8% greater odds of girl experiencing improvement in schooling participation (aOR = 1.08, 95% CI [1.005, 1.154], p = 0.036)