Between Hope and a Hard Place:Boys and Young Men Negotiating Gender,

Poverty and Social Worth in Ethiopia (download full working paper here)

Gina Crivello, Young LivesNikki van der Gaag, Gender Justice & Women's Rights, Oxfam

Adolescence, Youth and Gender: Building Knowledge for Change University of Oxford, 8-9 September 2016

Research Questions

From a relational gender perspective, looking across the second decade of life, this paper asks:

What affects boys’ trajectories through school and work, including their aspirations, agency, place, and changing roles and responsibilities within family and community contexts? What obstacles do adolescent boys face as they seek to transition into young adults? What strategies do they develop to overcome these obstacles?

Motivation – why look at boys’ transitions and trajectories?• Increasing global focus on adolescence as a key

transition point in in the life course, the point at which gender socialisation intensifies, and a window of opportunity for intervention

• Much current focus in development is on adolescent girls’ transitions (schooling, marriage, fertility, etc.)

• In relation to social norms and expectations there has been much focus on the harms that social norms cause for girls’ wellbeing, but what it means to be a boy in any given time and place is also socially constructed and dynamic

• Boys are marginalized by an overwhelming focus on girls.

Influential Concepts and Literature1. Studies that conceptualise transitions in terms of ‘vital

conjunctures’ defined as a ‘socially structured zone of possibility that emerges around specific periods of potential transformation in a life or lives (Johnson-Hanks 2002; also Jeffrey 2010; Langevang 2008; Locke and Te Lintelo 2012).

2. ‘Waithood’ studies highlighting the consequences of economic crisis in low- and middle-income countries for young men’s life trajectories and the challenges they face in achieving socially recognised adulthood (Mains 2007; Honwana 2014). In this study, boys identified ‘learning’, ‘land’, ‘love’ (marriage) and ‘labour’ as key to achieving male adulthood – yet many challenges, leaving them, as we’ve called it, ‘stuck between hope and a hard place’.

3. Gender and masculinities scholarship - masculinity as plural, diverse, relational, hierarchical, and intersectional with other social factors such as age, class, ethnicity/race and location (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Messerschmidt 2012; Cornwall et al 2011); emerging ‘boyhood studies’. (Studies of gender and Ethiopian childhood – e.g. Abebe 2011; Heissler & Porter 2013; Poluha 2004; Heinonen 2011).

The Ethiopian Social and Policy Context• Youthful country: 15-29 year olds make up over half the

country’s population• Despite fastest growing economy, remains one of the world’s

poorest countries (per capita income of US$550)• Expansion of infrastructure and improving access to services

such as health and education• But in rural areas, insufficient job creation and land shortages

encourage rural-to-urban migration• Youth unemployment is a key policy concern (much research on

young men); fears hopelessness leads to criminal / anti-social behaviour

• Numbers of girls and boys attending primary school more or less equal now (but regional variation)

• Young people in this study grew up within lifetime of the MDGs – is the investment in education paying off in jobs and livelihoods?

The Current Study

Young Lives: a study of child poverty

Young Lives research in Ethiopia: study sites

Place and space are important factors shaping boys’ and young men’s life chances as well as their sense of hope, possibility and belonging / feeling out of place.

Miki, Tufa and Afework: 3 Trajectories of Hope by way of illustration

Age 12 Age 19/20

MIKI

TUFA

AFEWORK

(Sense of hope)

(Sense of hopelessness)This presentation will focus on one aspect of the findings: ‘What affects boys’ trajectories of hope across the second decade of life?’

Miki: “Working hard but not changing your life”From urban Addis Ababa neighbourhood, 19 years old

• He has been brought up by his grandmother. As a boy he enjoyed doing the housework and wanted to be an engineer.

• However, when his father was sick (and subsequently died) his teacher refused to let him go back to school. Despite this, at 15, Miki said “I have become a mature and disciplined person. I reconcile individuals when they quarrel.”

• He wanted to start a small business selling eggs but could not get a loan. He ended up migrating to Sudan and became involved in smuggling and contraband. He suffered a lot of violence and was robbed.• Age 19, he sees no way out. He says that poverty is: “Working hard but not changing your life.”

• He would like to go back to school – “but how can I go to school in the desert?”

• The only positive thing in his life is his girlfriend who he says looks after him.

• He misses his grandmother.

‘Tufa’ – ‘Since I am the only boy in the family…’From rural Leki

He left school in Grade 2 to seek paid work following his father’s imprisonment‘Following his imprisonment, I was forced to substitute for him and run the family. Since I am the only boy in the family and my family is poor, I was forced to drop out of school and engage in paid work to sustain the life of my family. I was hired to herd cattle for one of the households in the community, in order to feed my family.’ (Age 16)Age 16, still in Grade 2, while his younger sister attended Grade 5. Another reason for this grade difference is because Tufa enrolled late in school, because his parents needed his assistance in herding, farming, and PSNP (productive safety net program) works. Once finally enrolled, he had to leave his school twice because of his father’s imprisonment – something which made him unhappy because he fell ‘behind his friends’.Age 19, Tufa regrets having dropped out of school but he feels he cannot return since he would be among small children in Grade 2. Yet is hopeful, wants to work on irrigation works, start his own vegetable business and his uncle serves as his role model.

Afework: ‘I am the fruit of their hard work’From urban Addis Ababa neighbourhood

7 years old: mother died10 years old: father diedHe and his brother were raised by his sister (worked in Middle East) and a male cousinMuch focus in the family has been on supporting Afework’s schooling

‘They are not married yet because of (me and my brother]. They have to live their own lives. They have done their best and helped us from the moment my mother died. I am the fruit of their hard work and will be happy to see them get married.’

Received aid from charity groupsDidn’t work for payActive in school and local youth groupsAge 19, Afework is enrolled in a private high school – Grade 10Steady progress, no grade repetition• Material security• Family support• Leader among his peers

Themes emerging from wider analysis

1. ‘Fighting against standing still’ – the need for progress, for living a dynamic life; the need for work; boys’ attitudes towards work reflect economic need and also strong interdependent relations within households. Boys and young men considered paid work a protective factor in the sense that working prevents idleness and stagnation which they feared and resisted.

2. ‘Simply counting my age’ – waiting for change, wasting time; girls more likely to stay in school, have option to marry

3. Roots and routes – socio-spatial belonging, place and identity; migration as one strategy in the search for personal progress

Summary

1. Boys’ (and girls’) individual trajectories make little sense in isolation from others’ or from wider social and economic changes that directly and indirectly affect their choices, chances and actions.

2. What it means to become a man cannot be separated out from other aspects of boys’ identity or from their everyday experiences of poverty. Boys’ trajectories are diverse.

3. Place matters and there were locational differences in boys’ sense of hope.

4. The vital conjunctures marking boys’ trajectories to becoming men centred on the relationship between schooling, family life, individual initiative and changed in the wider environment. Hope mediated the way boys confronted change and new possibilities.

www.younglives.org.uk• methodology and research papers• datasets (UK Data Archive)• publications• child profiles • e-newsletter

FINDING OUT MORE

AcknowledgementsYoung Lives children, parents/caregivers and other research participants, including the Ethiopian research teams.

We received excellent research assistance from Ina Zharkevich, Jen Roest and Bridget Azubuike and comments from Kirrily Pells.

Funders: DFID, DGIS, Hewlett Foundation, IrishAid, Oak Foundation, Bernard Van Leer Foundation.

Thank You