Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the challenges in understanding Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and the co-production of related evaluation targets. We present findings from mixed-method research among young women taking part in the SHE SOARS project youth groups in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The widespread endorsement of Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as a fundamental human right has led to the expansion of SRHR programming across the globe. Yet, despite awareness that out-of-school adolescent women face significantly higher barriers in accessing rights, services and legal protection, they are seldom the primary target of SRHR programming. This is arguably because local and regional norms, centred around the restriction and control of young women’s bodies, attitudes and economic empowerment are often at odds with the idea of consensual, safe and pleasurable sexual experiences advocated by adolescent SRHR (ASRHR) research (Buller and Schulte, 2018). Understanding the importance of local norms also means developing a nuanced understanding of independent decision-making and autonomy in the context of norms against and for ASRHR, something that can seldom be understood by headline indicators from large cross-sectional surveys. This paper borrows from and expands on a mixed-methods methodology from the poverty literature (the Consensual Approach) to tackle these measurement challenges in the context of the SHE SOARS initiative, a youth-led project for young women taking place in informal urban settlements in Kenya, rural Zambia and refugee host communities in Uganda (CARE Canada, 2021). Through a set of focus groups followed by a survey we investigate young women’s understanding, preferences and endorsement of ARSHR rights as well as the individual, relational and norm-based obstacles to their access and reflect on implications for co-production of future ASRHR programme evaluations and related ASRHR survey modules.