News

New mapping project, launched by Maplecroft, the Nike Foundation and UN Foundation, spotlights plight of 600 million adolescent girls

12/12/2009

Mapping the vulnerability of adolescent girls in the developing world

Girls Discovered, the first online resource to collate and map data highlighting the vulnerability of adolescent girls around the world, has been launched by global mapping specialist Maplecroft, the Nike Foundation and the United Nations Foundation.

The new website, containing over 200 data sets and interactive maps, addresses the knowledge gap surrounding the global development of adolescent girls. The resource pinpoints where and how girls are suffering and where more investment is needed. It is targeted at policymakers, donors, businesses and NGOs and aims to stimulate political and financial action to make a difference to the lives of 600 million adolescent girls worldwide.

The interactive maps reveal the countries where girls are most vulnerable and give users the chance to change lives using Action Guides, which highlight opportunities for girls in the developing world. The maps provide national and sub-national level statistics, enabling users to explore data sets to understand the most pressing issues affecting girls, including: literacy, poverty, discrimination, wage inequality, child marriage, female genital mutilation, child labour and HIV rates.

One of the key findings of Girls Discovered is that there is a scarcity of data on girls aged 10-14 years, a critical juncture in a girl's life.

“Adolescent girls in the developing world remain invisible and uncounted. These girl-specific statistics are a tremendous step toward ensuring that girls are visible and tracked. It is our hope that this quantitative analysis will move people to action - to better understand adolescent girls' reality and to promote and invest in them having a better future.”

– Lisa MacCallum, Managing Director of the Nike Foundation.

A unique feature of the site is the Girls Vulnerability Index, which uses sub-national data on India to identify hotspots of vulnerability across the country's 28 states. The index found that girls in Nagaland, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Manipur are the most vulnerable across a spectrum of issues relating to their health and wellbeing, education, economic opportunities and chore burdens.

Girls Discovered also addresses the impact climate change has on the lives of adolescent girls. Drought, for instance, affects women and girls the most by increasing their chore burdens (time spent collecting water, food and fuel). Maplecroft's map of climate change vulnerability can be overlayed with any of the girls' data sets to identify areas of greatest risk.

“It is time we focused on girls. The welfare of adolescent girls is crucial for the economic and social progress of countries in the developing world. An extra year in primary school statistically boosts girls' future wages by 10% to 20%, and every additional year a girl spends in secondary school lifts her income by 15% to 25%. The size of a country's economy is in no small part determined by the education and skill sets of its girls. At present only 0.5% of official development assistance goes to girls.”

– Alyson Warhurst, Founding Director of Maplecroft and a professor at Warwick
Business School

“Girls Discovered provides compelling evidence of the opportunities to improve policies and scale up investments to transform the lives of the world's adolescent girls. We believe that transformation of the lives of adolescent girls is central to eliminating global poverty. Girls Discovered is a must-see resource for policymakers and advocates.”

– Tamara Kreinin, Executive Director of the UN Foundation's Women & Population Program.

Girls Discovered is one of a group of resources being launched by The Coalition for Adolescent Girls, which was founded by the United Nations Foundation and Nike Foundation.

Data sources include UNESCO, UNICEF, UNAIDS, Demographic and Health Surveys, Population Council, WHO, World Bank, International Labour Organisation and Maplecroft's own global risk indices.

The Girls Discovered website can be seen at: www.girlsdiscovered.org.

Global Girls Facts:

Prevalence of FGM is widest in Somalia, where 98% of women and adolescent girls aged 15-49 years have been genitally mutilated or cut.

In Ethiopia, a mother has only a 1.5% chance of having skilled personnel attend her labour. In the UK, a woman has only a 1% chance of no skilled attendant overseeing her labour.

In Bangladesh, two in every five girls currently aged 20-24 years were married before aged 15.