Gender Socialization during Adolescence in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

"By drawing attention to the gender socialization process among adolescents, it is possible to re-direct intervention efforts, taking into consideration how young people imagine their transitions to adulthood - and how they achieve them. Rather than reproducing gender inequality, girls and boys can work to transform gender systems, roles and identities." (page 5)

This paper provides an overview of the gender socialisation process during adolescence - from its basic theoretical foundations to contemporary programme interventions that aim to influence it. Researchers from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Office of Research - Innocenti explore theories from key disciplines (psychology, sociology, and biology) with the aim of capturing what these disciplines say about gender socialisation and its influences and outcomes. They develop a socio-ecological framework to bring together the main factors that influence the gender socialisation process and its outcomes, providing practical suggestions on how to use knowledge around gender socialisation in the design of policies and programmes to improve gender equality.

The paper's definition of gender socialisation is: "a process by which individuals develop, refine and learn to 'do' gender through internalizing gender norms and roles as they interact with key agents of socialization, such as their family, social networks and other social institutions" (page 3). This process begins as soon as children are born (sometimes even in utero); as children get older, the list of people who communicate what constitutes appropriate gender behaviour to them expands beyond the family and includes, peers, teachers, community leaders, public figures, and many more. Children do not remain passive in this process and themselves internalise gender identities and enforce norms and expectations in their interaction with others. Being the bridge between childhood and adulthood, adolescence is described here as a critical period in which many of the outcomes of gender inequality manifest or intensify. Disadvantages experienced by adolescent girls include harmful practices and negative outcomes such as child marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, teenage pregnancy, school drop-out, and a high prevalence of HIV (UNICEF, 2014; World Health Organization (WHO), 2016) Adolescence is also a period when, along with rapid physical, sexual, and brain development, the shaping of gender beliefs and attitudes intensifies. Thus, UNICEF and others have come to see adolescence as a "second window of opportunity" to redirect negative trajectories from childhood and start new ones that lead to positive outcomes for girls and boys, and later in life, women and men.

To help explain how this happens, in Part II of the paper, the objective is to situate the gender socialisation process during adolescence within a broader social, cultural, economic, and political context, where it is influenced by a multi-level and relational set of determinants. The researchers introduce a conceptual framework (see Figure 2, page 19) that brings together the gender socialisation process with the main factors that influence it, as well as the gendered indicators and outcomes of that process. There are several levels of influence: (i) The structural level refers to the broader societal values and practices, political structures, and socio-economic conditions, global media, and information sources that exert influence at the broader, societal level. The structural level factors determine the gendered distribution of resources and how relative status and power will potentially impact an individual's personal circumstances and life chances as well as impose constraints on behaviour. (ii) The social-interactional level constitutes the micro-environments where individuals live their daily lives and learn the gender norms, practices, and appropriate gender roles of their community through everyday interactions with the agents and institutions that shape gender socialisation. The key environments and agents of socialisation during adolescence include the family and parents, social institutions such as schools and religious bodies, social networks such as the peer group, local media, and the community/neighbourhood. Besides opportunities for practising behaviours and gaining knowledge on prevailing gender norms, these everyday interactions also familiarize individuals with the incentives and disincentives linked to specific behaviours in their social environment. (iii) The individual level where, through interactions and observations of others' behaviours, girls and boys go through a process of self-socialisation and start making inferences about the meaning and consequences of gender-based behaviours.

The third section of the paper examines how change can take place - both in terms of the norms conveyed and reinforced through the gender socialisation process, and in the process itself. The researchers review changes in demographics, the global media, and gendered economic opportunities to understand how the gender socialisation process and gender norms and identities have been transformed at the macro level. For example: "In addition to greater interconnectedness in the economic sphere, rapid advancements in information technology around the world have made different types of media important transmitters of alternative gender norms and behaviours. This has created a truly global mass media that may operate alongside, or come to dominate, local media, and in which content developed for a particular audience, is transmitted to entirely different populations (for example Mexican and Brazilian telenovelas). Two forms of media have been particularly influential in this regard. The first is television and film, where mass media brand penetration has provided adolescents and their peers and families with examples of alternative gender attitudes and behaviours. These, although stylized and often inaccurate, do challenge existing norms in multiple ways. The second is the internet, which has become accessible to over 3 billion users, about 2 billion of them in low- and middle-income countries....Youth increasingly turn to online sources or communities for information and advice on challenging social questions. By doing so they broaden the base of opinion on which to model their behaviour and reduce the influence of parents or community in shaping the information on gender that they receive" (page 28).

The researchers then share the results of a literature review of programme interventions that have attempted to change gendered attitudes and behaviours at the individual and social-interactional levels. The paper identifies 31 such evaluated programmes and groups the strategies they employed to make recommendations for more holistic programming. The review identified 3 broad strategies used by these programmes: (i) empowering young people (mainly girls) with information, skills, and social support to challenge norms; (ii) fostering an enabling environment in which to challenge gender norms; (iii) working with men and boys, including directly with young individuals and with influential males to change attitudes and beliefs. They describe these strategies in greater detail in Part III of the paper, providing specific examples of how programmes have utilised them to change gender attitudes and behaviours. "Evidence for the impact of the reviewed programmes is mixed. Many used multiple strategies to achieve greater effect....Most of the programmes saw significant changes in gender attitudes, but there were generally much smaller changes in behaviours, possibly because these are slower to bring about and would require longer-term studies to identify them....These findings strongly suggest that focusing on changing individual attitudes and beliefs and the immediate environment at the social-interactional level, while necessary for social change, is itself not sufficient to bring about fundamental changes in social norms around gender. To achieve greater impact, these efforts should be supported by, or take advantage of, shifts at the structural level" (pages 34-35).

In conclusion, the researchers stress that, "[i]n order to maximize and scale up their impact, policy and programming efforts will need to be carefully positioned within the bigger picture captured in our conceptual framework, and interventions will need to be more effectively coordinated to complement each other" (page 36). Finally, the paper offers recommendations for more holistic policy and programming efforts around gender socialisation in adolescence. The researchers suggest:

• Establishing a legal and policy environment that complements and takes advantage of elements of structural change, which enable broader shifts towards gender equity and equality. For example, laws and policies that better balance the demands of work and other commitments, such as parental leave, effective and affordable access to reproductive health services, or employment protection laws, may facilitate engagement in paid employment for all, while also encouraging a reconsideration of traditional gender roles within households. Laws and policies must also acknowledge the inherently disruptive effects of social change and seek to mitigate them where possible. For example, care needs to be taken to mitigate the potential increases in intimate partner violence that may accompany changes in the economic roles of women within households.
• Structuring and designing gender transformative interventions in ways that directly relate to structural changes. For example, mass media interventions may have more of an impact if the narratives portrayed reflect a feasible reality and present solutions for "real-life" challenges experienced by the intended audience. That is, programmes such as Sexto Sentido and Entre Amigas, which deliver gender transformative messaging and information on sexual and reproductive health, are likely to be more effective in environments where sexual and reproductive health (including control over reproduction) is increasingly seen as an important factor in life success, due to economic and/or demographic shifts, and where other media messaging has made it possible for these issues to be safely explored.
• Developing life course approaches that account for the biological and social changes that take place during the gender socialisation process in adolescence. As individuals transition between life course stages and are exposed to different influences through factors such as migration or mass media, the relative influence of family members will fluctuate, making interventions focused on the family more or less effective in producing social change.

A final thought: "It is important that policies and programmes that aim to influence the gender socialization process are framed in positive, solution-oriented ways that emphasize the benefits of gender equity to all members of society, while clearly preparing young people for the demands a changing society will place on them" (page 38).

Also available are these supporting materials to the paper:

1. A blog on gender socialisation during adolescence
2. A brief that summarises the main points from the discussion paper
3. A podcast on the topic