jhart

Jacqueline Hart

Jacqueline Hart is the former Vice President for Strategic Learning, Research and Evaluation at AJWS.

Addressing the global gap in data about women and girls

If you want to improve something, the challenge first needs to be visible—and, unfortunately, some of the challenges facing women in developing countries are invisible. Why? They haven’t been clearly investigated by researchers and tracked with data.  We know that we do what we measure.  In other words, if we don’t measure the right things, …

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Fear of female sexuality: addressing an unspoken driver of early and child marriage

We all know that adolescence is, by definition, a time when children begin to mature into adults: physically, mentally and emotionally. In many communities, it’s also a time fraught with anxiety about the emerging sexuality of adolescent girls—a time when, driven by fear, some families exert tight control over where girls can go, who they can talk to, and how they dress. Because the roles of women and girls remain restricted in patriarchal societies across the world, families often marry off daughters at this age, believing their honor hinges on keeping girls virgins until marriage. In addition, families often pay lower dowries if they marry their daughters at younger ages.

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