Events

Girls Learn Women Earn

November 25, 2022-March 08, 2023

Madagascar

At the World Bank we are committed to supporting women and girls with the breadth of impact in our projects and within our staff. We are proud that as of 2022, 48 percent of our office workforce in Madagascar is female, represented at all levels. Equal gender representation is our goal. We are also ensuring that all World Bank financed projects address gender gaps and support greater access to services and employment opportunities for women and girls.

We hope to create more awareness about the importance of girls’ education, women’s participation in the labor force and preventing gender-based violence (GBV). This is why we are partnering with the First Lady, Mialy Razakandisa Rajoelina, and other partners to launch the Une Fille qui Apprend, Une Femme qui Gagne (Girls Learn, Women Earn) to crowdsource ideas and actions. The campaign will run from November 25, 2022, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to March 8, 2023, International Women’s Day.

For a little over 100-days, we will focus on building advocacy and creating awareness, but also on taking actions to impact girls’ education, women’s labor participation and prevention of gender-based violence.

OVERVIEW
GLWE PILLARS

Une Fille qui Apprend, Une Femme qui Gagne is a call-to-action to prioritize three very relevant areas of focus in Madagascar – girl’s education, women’s economic empowerment and prevention of GBV.
The campaign consists of organizations signing up to be a part of the campaign through a simple registration process. As part of this process, interested organizations must describe the actions that they will take within their own organization in one or more of the campaign areas and commit to implementing these activities by March 1, 2023. Organizations that have signed up will receive a letter acknowledging their registration and agreed action, and formally including them as part of the initiative.
Who can sign up?
Any organization (government, private, civil society, academic or research institution, development agency, etc.) may register and participate. Participating organizations will be featured in communications materials and invited to showcase their work at a closing ceremony in March 2023.
How to register
To take part in the campaign, please register your organization. Actions may be taken across one or more of the campaign pillars.
Disclaimer
The Girls Learn, Women Earn initiative invites any organization to take part in the ‘100 days of action’ campaign, with the aim to support more awareness, advocacy and action focused on girls’ education, women’s labor participation and Sexual and Reproductive Health in Madagascar. Any organization seeking to be involved in the campaign may use the hashtag #GirlsLearnWomenEarn and the GLWE logo.
Organizations taking part in #GirlsLearnWomenEarn are only associated with efforts to support girls’ education, women’s labor participation and prevention of gender-based violence. Organizations’ views, statements and actions are entirely their own and should not be in any way attributed to the World Bank Group.

Last Updated: Nov 23, 2022
Pillar 1: Keep Girls in School
Accessing education remains a challenge for many girls in Madagascar. Despite the relative gender parity in primary and secondary school enrollment, completion rates are lower for girls than boys and Madagascar has high rates of adolescents that are out of school. Women are also less likely than men to be literate, only 10 percent of women have primary education and 5 percent have completed middle school (WDI 2019).
There are a number of activities that your organization could do to keep girls in school.
Improve availability and access to schooling
Make school facilities gender-sensitive
Lift financial constraints to access education
Promote positive social norms around girls’ education
Prevent school based GBV
Eliminate obstacles for pregnant girls to continue their education
Empower girls and boys with information, skills, and knowledge
Support safe spaces/girl clubs for girls

Pillar 2: Better jobs for women
Women have a high labor force participation rate, however, the majority are self-employed (90 percent) and/or contributing family workers (87 percent) (WDI 2019). Only 10 percent of women are waged and salaried workers, in contrast to 14 percent of men. Vulnerable and self-employment pose threats for women’s income generation, as those types of employment are associated with lower productivity and earnings. According to the World Bank’s Poverty Assessment (2014), women’s earnings were 34 percent lower than that of men.
There are a number of activities that your organization could do to support greater economic opportunities for women.
Assist women in developing their technical and life skills
Mandate equal remuneration for work of equal value
Ensure women have same training and career development opportunities
Address gender wage gaps

Pillar 3: Prevent GBV
Violence against women and children is widespread in Madagascar and produces immediate and long-term harm to survivors, their families, and society at large. According to available data, 28 percent of adolescent girls and women aged 15-49 have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetime, 40.3 percent of women aged 20-24 were married by the age of 18, and 13 percent by age 15 (MICS, 2018). The share of women reporting physical violence is higher in urban (30 percent) than in rural areas (21 percent). Strikingly, girls aged 10 to 14 years old from rural areas and living in blended families are the most likely to experience all types of violence (UNICEF 2018). In most cases, women are consistently more likely to justify wife-beating; 40 percent of women compared to 28 percent of men report that wife-beating is justified under some circumstances (MICS, 2018)
There are a number of activities that your organization could do to raise awareness and prevent GBV.
Support economic empowerment initiatives
Promote behavior and social norms change on GBV
Raise awareness on GBV among young people
Enable access to justice and GBV support services
Support GBV service providers
Promote positive social norms in the community

Last Updated: Nov 23, 2022