‘Out-of-school girls’: do we need to re-think the terminology?

Buckler, Alison and Mkwanazi, Faith (2023). ‘Out-of-school girls’: do we need to re-think the terminology? UKFIET Knowledge Hub.

URL: https://www.ukfiet.org/2023/out-of-school-girls-do...

Abstract

For the past decade we have been working on a range of research and practitioner initiatives with adolescent and young women in southern Africa. Their lives have been distinct and diverse, with periods of financial comfort and stability as well as poverty and uncertainty. What unites their experiences – across countries and contexts – is that they have been through intermittent periods of formal schooling and were, when we first met them, an age at which they could be enrolled in secondary school. The short-hand in the policy, practitioner, and academic literature to describe them (and we have used this ourselves) is ‘out-of-school girls’ or ‘girls who are out-of-school’. This blog shares our reflections around whether or not this terminology is appropriate.