Dr. Anju Malhotra - Principal Advisor on Gender and Rights at UNICEF - DFID Girl Summit 2014

"As some of you know, we did this systematic review [What Works to Prevent Child Marriage: A Review of the Evidence] a couple of years ago and from that we know that there are some effective solutions [to ending child marriage]." Anju Malhotra 

Panel Discussion: Spotlight on Progress - "Prevention and Safeguarding: Protecting Those at Risk"

Context: This presentation is from one of the 14 "Spotlights on Progress" video-recorded sessions from the Girl Summit 2014, London, United Kingdom (UK). The sessions were organised to share best practice between practitioners, grassroots activists, and government ministers across the issues of female genital mutilation (FGM) and child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM). Girl Summit is a project of the Department for International Development (DFID), UK.

Profile of speaker: A featured panelist of this Spotlight session was Dr. Anju Malhotra, Principal Advisor on Gender and Rights, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) who gave a presentation entitled "Assessing and measuring progress in child marriage reduction". Dr. Malhotra works on "UNICEF’s global strategy, programming and policy on gender and rights, especially through the shaping and implementation of UNICEF’s Gender Action Plan. She joined UNICEF in 2012, prior to which she served as Vice President, Research Innovation and Impact at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). She has an extensive research and program portfolio focusing on issues such as child marriage, girls’ education, innovation and women’s empowerment, adolescent transition to adulthood, sex selection, reproductive health and rights, and technology’s role in economically empowering women. Her work is most noted for advancing the measurement of women’s empowerment, rigorously evaluating programming on adolescents, and for framing the concept and measurement of child marriage. She has and continues to serve on a number of expert panels on gender strategy, measurement, and indicators...."

Strategy overview: Malhotra cited a review of studies done in December 2012 (see source section below) which showed that lifeskills, mobilisation, and work were sometimes effective in reducing CEFM, but these were generally not operating at scale. Others that are successful, according to evidence, and are operating at scale, include girls' education. And others are successful in some circumstances, like cash incentives. One that she suggested should be evaluated is mass communications. Legislation on its own, however, has not been effective.

Malhotra suggested areas that need to be researched and measured. Current measures of success are at the programme level: individual level outcomes and changes - changes in knowledge and behaviour of girls, parents, and legislators. Another measure would be how many girls are marrying later when in a programme - both as compared to numbers of peers not in programmes and compared to general population numbers. At community or national levels, the measurements are usually outputs rather than outcomes, for example, number of committed communities or changes in legislation. At the population level, a measure is prevalence of marriage - such as age of marriage trends within age groups, and burden of marriage across a population. 

Malhotra introduced consideration of the need to measure the level between the individual/community level and the population level. She suggested that what can be measured in the middle would tell what is going on and could be measured for middle-term effect - 3-5 years of a programme. This might help predict what individual or community effects would lead to population level change.

She proposed measuring inputs now that there is a post-2015 indicator - for example, level of committed resources, policies, and action plans. Outputs at the national level might be, for example: number of programmes operating at scale, and what expertise and capacity has expanded to address CEFM at scale. Measuring what is happening to girls and families at the local level as 3-5 year outcomes might include: % of girls 11-14 years of age attending school; % of parents with aspirations for daughters to marry later or have a different life from their parents; % of women in a labour force; increases in girls’ skills and opportunities.

Overview of this Summit session: From the Girl Summit summary document: "This spotlight will share experience and discuss ways forward on measuring progress in addressing FGM and child, early and forced marriage - including measurement of changes in behaviour and the social norms which uphold these practises. Discussion will include the areas that need to be investigated; how they can be measured innovatively and ethically; and how this evidence can be effectively linked to national and international policy processes."

The session was opened by a presentation entitled: "Commitment Announcement: Alexander Woolcombe from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced their commitment to join the global effort to strengthen the evidence base on FGM and CEFM. This includes: (i) working with Tostan to support their monitoring, evaluation and learning programme to understand how and why they are having impact; (ii) co-funding with CIFF to support ICRW and the Work Bank on research on the economic consequences of CEFM; and (iii) work in Ethiopia to improve nutrition and reproductive health by tackling structural determinants."

The speakers, in order of appearance, are:
"Dr. Anju Malhotra, Principal Advisor on Gender and Rights, UNICEF - Assessing and measuring progress in child marriage reduction.

Dr. Francesca Moneti, Senior Child Protection Specialist, UNICEF - Measuring social norm change.

Dr. Caroline Harper, Head of Programme, Social Development, Overseas Development Institute (ODI) - Measuring empowerment and social transformation in the post-2015 agenda (OECD and ODI).

Kecia Bertermann, Monitoring & Learning Director, Girl Hub - Collecting data on empowerment and change in attitudes: innovations and ethics.

Professor Hazel Barrett, Coventry University/ Researching Female Genital Mutilation Intervention Programmes Linked to African Communities in the EU (REPLACE) - Approach to measuring community based behaviour change; Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and UK.

The session is moderated by Nick Dyer, Director General for Policy and Global Programmes at the Department for International Development."

Footage of this (available below) and other "Spotlights" are available on DFID’s YouTube channel.

The Girl Summit is a project of DFID. Click here and scroll down to see the full list of individuals and organisations committed to working on girls' issues, as well as a list of Girl Summit Charter signatories.