How is a gender-transformative approach for early primary education essential for long-term visions of gender equality? Curiosity in gender equality in education often starts with female adolescents, which fails to address the embedded oppression girls and women have endured up to that point. Therefore, more attention must be paid to early education efforts for gender equality, which aim not only to support children’s literacy from the beginning of their education, but also aim to unravel the embedded sex-stereotypes and oppression that lead girls and women to drop out later.

Mary Faith Mount-Cors and Jill Gay of EdIntersect collaborated with Rokhaya Diop of Chemonics International to recommend strategies that tackle how gender equality can be addressed in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) at the beginning of primary school. (Read this document HERE.) Mount-Cors, Gay, and Diop collaborated on gender planning for the USAID-funded All Children Reading (ACR) or Lecture Pour Tous in Senegal, and use the project outcome structure of the Senegal gender plan to frame their discussion.

The key components of the early grade reading program’s intervention, which are used in the authors’ discussion, are as follows: improve early grade reading instruction in schools, improve policies and systems to scale up and sustain quality reading instruction, materials, and community engagement, and strengthen the support students receive from family and community members as they learn to read. The authors used a mixed methodological approach in developing the gender plan, which included a literature review, consultations with stakeholders in intervention areas to collect information and recommendations, and classroom and school-based observations. 

Mount-Cors, Gay, and Diop provide several recommendations for each component of the early grade reading program in Senegal. For example, to improve early grade reading instruction, the authors suggest improving textbooks to erase or reduce sex-stereotyped depictions of girls, boys, women, and men, addressing unequal gender norms which teacher-student interactions through social-emotional learning approaches, and addressing the beginnings of school-related gender-based violence.

As a method to improve systems that sustain quality reading instruction, materials, and community engagement, the authors underscore the importance of female teachers and women in educational leadership. Their recommendation for the third component of the program (strengthening students’ support systems as they learn to read), involves addressing unequal gender norms that detract from girls’ learning, which have worsened during the covid-19 pandemic. The authors recommend all-inclusive community dialogues and single sex and co-ed clubs as gender transformative activities to combat gender norms which adversely affect girls in early primary education. 

 Girls are met with many gender-related barriers at home and at school which can be addressed and mitigated through an evidence-informed, solution-based approach. Mount-Cors, Gay, and Diop argue that employing a gender-transformative approach which gets at the root of gender oppression in early primary education is critical for the success of everyone. By acting at the individual, family, and structural level, gender-transformative approaches will drive early primary programs to be effective and sustainable.