"The apparently inexorable rise in the proportion of "missing girls" in much of East and South Asia has attracted much attention amongst researchers and policy-makers. An encouraging trend was suggested by the case of South Korea, where child sex ratios were the highest in Asia but peaked in the...

Sex ratio at birth, the number of boys born for every 100 girls, has increased in the South Caucasus in the past decades. A World Bank study sought to produce rigorous and supporting evidence on the issue of “missing girls” in the South Caucasus countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia...

At the onset of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there was global concern about the negative indirect impacts the crisis would have on girls and women and their human capital. Two years into the crisis, this brief summarizes the evidence to date on how the prediction of a shadow crisis has...

Adolescent girls are viewed as a key demographic group to target for successfully breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty in developing countries. Unfortunately, for many teenage girls in developing countries, adolescence entails a fleeting transition from childhood to adulthood,...

The review of the literature demonstrates the variation, complexity and inter-relatedness of the factors that constrain female education in Africa. These factors are similar to yet different from those exhibited elsewhere in the developing world. There is a growing body of scholarly review of...

This thematic note is part of a broader mixed-method study on gender inequalities in Madagascar, which intends to illustrate the key gender gaps in the country and shed light on the unique challenges that young Malagasy women face in their educational, professional, and family trajectories. Due...

Gender equality has long been central to the World Bank's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. More recently, women's and girls’ empowerment (WGE) has become a priority in the Africa region in the context of the region's demographic...

Evidence shows that Guinean women and girls face important barriers across all dimensions of well-being that prevent them from having access to opportunities on an equal footing with men. The poor agency of women and girls, as reflected in the high prevalence of discriminatory legal and social...