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Health clinic A Nepali school girls visits a health clinic. Jim Holmes DFAT CC BY 2.0


Adolescent girls at different stages in the life-course face different needs and constraints. These are highly dependent on girls’ contexts at household, community and state levels. 

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Our working assumption is that local variation in socio-cultural and religious traditions, local government performance, geographic location and employment opportunities will combine with broader patterns in population dynamics, conflict and climate change to shape the vulnerabilities and opportunities facing girls. The interplay of local and country-specific context factors—including politics, the degree to which international ideas and good practice resonate and the balance of power between formal and informal institutions- will also shape the extent to which programming is more or less effective in transforming adolescents’ lives. 

GAGE’s comparative, mixed methods, longitudinal research design will enable us to more systematically identify the relative contribution of different context factors, and thereby help inform programming design and implementation processes to be more tailored.