ABSTRACT
In measuring progress towards Education For All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), development agencies express concern that few nations will reach the education-and gender-related MDGs by 2015 (UNGEI 2012). Embedded in the development community’s commitment to EFA and the MDGs is a clear focus on the empowerment of the “most marginalized” (UNESCO, 2010, p. 41). Here, educational enrollment and years of schooling is equated with empowerment (Aikman & Unterhalter, 2005; Chismaya, DeJaeghere, Kendall & Khan, 2013; Monkman, 2011). Despite increases in enrollment at the primary level, high drop-out rates remain at the upper primary (after grade 5) level. Thus, empowerment is being promoted at the upper primary and secondary levels as a means of addressing persisting inequality and gender-based discrimination. Adolescent education-the transition period where in many countries girls become women-is an important means to empower girls to move beyond basic education and achieve greater social mobility, increase their quality of life, and escape the confines of poverty and marginalization. However, still unclear is an understanding of the schooling-empowerment link: how educational processes at the adolescent level might promote empowerment and address gender inequality (Chismaya et al., 2013; Monkman, 2011; Ross, Shah & Wang, 2011; Stromquist, 2002).
