Paper short abstract:

This paper analysis actors and effects of a Unicef Program for secondary girls education.The ethnography shows the project everyday practices and target group's perceptions of the intervention. It also explores how "gender equity" interacts with local social norms on early marriages and pregnancies.

Paper long abstract:

Based on a fieldwork in three districts of rural and coastal Madagascar (Sofia, Fenerive Est and Vangaindrano), this paper aims at investigating the practices and ideologies of a national Programme for girls secondary education. The "Education for all" plan has shaped many intervention promoted by Unicef worldwide and it has suggested a more gender-oriented attention. My case-study is represented by a Programme that seeks to foster girls education through scholarships, boarding houses constructions, mentoring activities and WC for menstrual hygiene management. Despite the effort to focus on gender unbalance in education access in some marginal areas, my research shows how everyday project practices have produced unexpected side-effects.

In the three areas of the Programme the main cause of girls dropping out from primary to secondary education is represented by "forced" marriages and pregnancies.

By establishing a series of activities under the umbrella of "girls friendly schools", Unicef and local partner NGOs risk to reinforce the idea of only female responsibility for unwanted pregnancies as well as construct an ambiguous category of vulnerability which is not well perceived by the schoolgirls involved in the Program. In addition, schoolboys and some adults do not properly understand the gender-oriented idiom and claim the same needs for them (money for school fees, boarding schools, etc.).

Finally, the paper explores which kind of gender equity/discrimination concept is promoted through the Programme and how it interacts with local realities where traditional marriages ("moletry") and sanctions for boys responsible for pregnancy ("détournement") work as social norms on gender relationships.