COVID-19 and a Looming Crisis: Will Girls Return to School Post-Pandemic?

“Girls get pregnant because they are not going to school and some because they want money … Prostitution is rampant, girls don’t eat unless they go and sleep with older men for money … Now, we girls do have sex with our father’s age group, because we need money and men don’t give money for nothing.” Selection of quotes from a girls’ group, Mile 47, Sierra Leone, 2015[1]

COVID-19 has forced most of the world’s children to stay home from school, and the future of reopening is uncertain. This is an enormous educational setback for all children, and in parts of Africa it threatens to undo many of the critical gains made in girls’ education in recent years. 

Children wearing face masks gather outside their classroom at a school in Ivory Coast, May 25, 2020.[5]

School Closings Hurt Girls More than Boys

In low-income countries, girls’ education is significantly less prioritized than that of boys. For example, in Guinea, girls receive an average of only 0.9 years of education compared to 2.7 years for boys [2]. Because girls receive fewer years of education overall than boys, the schooling time they miss during a pandemic is a relatively larger portion of their education. When girls are kept home from school, they are not just losing valuable education time-- they are also missing out on social contact, networks of support, and essential information about their reproductive health and rights [1]. Some girls get trapped in a vicious cycle of gender-based violence (GBV) and missing school: the more school they miss, the higher their risk is for GBV, which in turn reduces their likelihood of returning to school.

The Gendered Risks of Sheltering at Home During COVID-19

While home from school during the pandemic, girls in Africa face heightened risks of economic precarity; GBV, including female genital mutilation, forced/child marriage, and early pregnancy; forced labor; and social exclusion, each of which is a significant roadblock to returning to school [1]. The financial strain on families due to COVID-19 means  girls must provide their family with additional sources of income, and family members may not later be able to afford losing that income by sending girls back to school. These sources of income may include transactional sex, contributing to a rise in adolescent pregnancies. 

Photo courtesy of Unesco.[4]

Teenage Pregnancies Increase During Crises

When the head teacher found out that I was pregnant, he called me to his office and told me, “You have to leave our school immediately because you are pregnant.” Jamida, Tanzania, April 2014[3]

According to one UNESCO report, pregnancies in Sierra Leonean girls rose by as much as 65% during the Ebola outbreak[4]. Girls themselves directly connected this surge with their absence from school[5], a space that typically affords them a level of structure and security. As schools reopened following the Ebola outbreak, girls were banned from attending if they were “visibly pregnant,” a subjective judgement that was determined by school principals[2]. This discriminatory policy was struck down in March 2020[6]. Yet in many other African countries, pregnant girls and young mothers are simply not permitted or realistically able to return to school.

© 2018 Smita Sharma for Human Rights Watch[3]

Pregnant girls typically face discrimination as a result of a common cultural belief that they are morally corrupt. Some countries uphold morality laws that allow girls to be charged with adultery; others require girls to take pregnancy tests. Although Sierra Leone recently struck down its official ban on allowing pregnant girls to attend school, Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea still maintain similar policies. Girls will often choose to leave school when they find out they are pregnant to avoid potential humiliation. Even when schools offer re-entry procedures they are often complex, and the prospect of navigating that process, catching up on schoolwork, and managing childcare can be daunting enough to deter girls from returning[3].

Solutions

All African Union (AU) governments have adopted progressive stances in regards to human rights, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which include commitments to quality education and gender equality. However, implementation of these policies is widely variable and often leaves room for discriminatory practices. To counter the potential for both implicit and explicit discrimination, some countries have taken steps such as removing school fees, offering accommodations for mothers (e.g., time for breast-feeding), and opening nurseries close to schools. These are meaningful steps, but many other countries still have no re-entry policies, which are essential to protecting pregnant girls’ right to education.[3]

The Human Rights Watch makes a number of recommendations to AU member states, the AU itself, and development partners. These include procedures to end pregnancy-based discrimination, develop re-entry policies, and reduce barriers to girls’ education at large [3]. In the context of COVID-19, Malala Fund urges responses to the pandemic to center gender equality [2]. Importantly, consulting with girls and young women and amplifying their voices is key to preventing the burden of COVID-19 from falling unequally on their shoulders [1].

[1] “Living Under Lockdown: Girls and COVID-19” https://plan-international.org/publications/living-under-lockdown

[2] “Malala Fund releases report on girls’ education and COVID-19” https://malala.org/newsroom/archive/malala-fund-releases-report-girls-education-covid-19

[3] “Leave No Girl Behind in Africa: Discrimination in Education against Pregnant Girls and Adolescent Mothers” https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/06/14/leave-no-girl-behind-africa/discrimination-education-against-pregnant-girls-and

[4] “Covid-19 school closures around the world will hit girls hardest” https://en.unesco.org/news/covid-19-school-closures-around-world-will-hit-girls-hardest

[5] “As COVID Shuts Schools, Girls Marry Out of Poverty” https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/covid-shuts-schools-girls-marry-out-poverty

[6] “5 actions to help bring the most marginalized girls back to school after COVID-19” https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2020/05/15/5-actions-to-help-bring-the-most-marginalized-girls-back-to-school-after-covid-19/