ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, global frameworks such as Education For All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have supported a rapid, absolute, and proportional increase in the number of girls attending lower primary school around the world. These increases were driven by universal, free or lower-cost primary school policies, which were instituted in the 1990s and 2000s by national governments across Southern Africa and other parts of the world. EFA-related policies were at least partially effective in lowering the barriers that marginalized children, including girls, faced in attending school. While significant constraints to access, retention, and learning still exist for marginalized youth (Lewis & Lockheed, 2006; MoEST, 2008), many girls and their families have taken advantage of these new educational opportunities. In less than 20 years, double-digit gender gaps in girls’ enrollment rates in the last grade of primary school have rapidly narrowed or entirely disappeared in countries as diverse as Bangladesh and Malawi (Chisamya, deJaghere, Kendall & Khan, 2012). In Malawi, where doubledigit gender gaps existed in the early 1990s, girls’ primary and secondary net enrollment rates have now surpassed boys’ (84% to 82% and 15% to 12% respectively) (MoGCCD & NSO, 2012). Boys still complete primary school at higher rates than girls, and, boys’ gross enrollment rates at the secondary level are higher than girls’, pointing to the shorter age period in which girls are able to or want to stay in school.
