‘Empowerment’ of adolescent girls and young women in Kinshasa: research about girls, by girls
Overview
In mid-2015, a team of 15 Congolese ‘girl researchers’ were recruited, trained, and mentored by the UK’s Department for International Development-funded La Pépinière programme. They conducted peer-to-peer research to explore the experiences, perceptions, and aspirations of adolescent girls and young women in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, in relation to their economic and social empowerment. In this fragile urban context, societal and personal expectations of girls and young women are high and they must carefully navigate precarious circumstances to survive economically and socially, and maintain their reputation as ‘good girls’. While it is always important to ensure that development programmes are grounded in women and girls’ own realities and aspirations, this is especially the case in fragile contexts where the risks are often magnified. The participatory engagement described here is a way to understand these realities and inform programmes to facilitate women and girls’ own journeys of empowerment.
This article is hosted by our co-publisher Taylor & Francis. For the full table of contents for this and previous issues of this journal, please visit the Gender and Development website.
Keywords
Additional details
Author(s)
How to cite this resource
Citation styles vary so we recommend you check what is appropriate for your context. You may choose to cite Oxfam resources as follows:
Author(s)/Editor(s). (Year of publication). Title and sub-title. Place of publication: name of publisher. DOI (where available). URL
Our FAQs page has some examples of this approach.