​Recent years have seen growing policy interest in adolescent girls. Some of this has been inspired by instrumental concerns (girls as a good investment in future development, both as development actors and as mothers of the next generation). At the same time, there is also a more rights-focused emphasis (girls as actors whose wellbeing and opportunities are systematically undermined and whose rights are abused). This growing global interest in gender equality has led to increasing attention to discriminatory social norms as key factors that continue to impede gender equality and undermine adolescent girls’ wellbeing and developmental opportunities.

Of the 61 communications initiatives examined in the systematic-style review, and discussed here in this short paper, just over half the programmes directly involved adolescent girls; some worked primarily with family and community decision makers, seven (11%) focused on men or boys and others were mass media programmes aimed at general audiences.

Rachel Marcus