Why and how we should listen to adolescent girls

As we celebrate International Day of the Girl 2025, it is essential to recognise the transformative potential of promoting adolescent girls’ leadership.

This is especially pertinent in a year in which the UK government has made decisions to slash Official Development Assistance (ODA), impacting gender and education programmes worldwide.

Historically, UK ODA has played a role in tackling gender inequality by supporting girls to fully realise their rights, including by improving access to education, preventing and responding to gender-based violence and combating early marriage. In research facilitated by ActionAid, adolescent girls around the world have raised these as major issues which impact and limit their lives and rights.

Adolescence as a pivotal but overlooked phase

Adolescent girls face challenges distinct from younger children (girls) and adult women. Their experiences are shaped by the pivotal transition between childhood and adulthood and influenced by structural inequalities which are often rooted in colonial legacies.

Most mainstream and grey literature focuses on either children or adult women, overlooking the specific needs and experiences of adolescent girls. This either infantilises adolescent girls or ‘matures’ them, burdening them with adult responsibilities. By enabling adolescent girls to conduct their own research, and by listening to and supporting them to take action on their findings, critical gaps are filled in our understanding of the issues that affect teenage girls, and we can collectively challenge the traditional power structures that silence their voices.

Centring adolescent girls’ knowledge, experience and solutions

Across different contexts, adolescent girls have demonstrated remarkable capacity for leadership. This challenges the unhelpful narrative of adolescent girls as passive victims. Adolescent girls are best positioned to identify the issues that affect their lives, connect with other adolescent girls and propose relevant and actionable solutions. To achieve this, ActionAid is facilitating girl-led research methodologies and advocacy which prioritise adolescent girls’ knowledge, experience, strategies and solutions to their own challenges.

From research to policy advocacy, girl-led approaches employ intersectional, decolonial, feminist and participatory frameworks to ensure we don’t treat ‘adolescent girl’ as a monolithic category. These frameworks help us understand how power operates differently, depending on an adolescent girl’s intersecting identities, and how colonial legacies continue to shape their realities.

This is essential for addressing the complex, overlapping systems of oppression that shape inequality. These approaches recognise that barriers like gender discrimination, racism and class cannot be separated from each other, and are deeply rooted in colonial and neo-colonial power structures. This means ensuring that girls from communities that have been marginalised can tell their own stories, find solutions and set policy priorities.

Girl-led research centres adolescent girls in all stages of the process, from identifying research questions, through to collecting and analysing the data and developing recommendations and advocacy strategies. This approach recognises adolescent girls as researchers, writers and advocates, rather than mere research subjects studied by traditional ‘knowledge makers’.

Decolonial, feminist, participatory action research is iterative. This makes long-term engagement, and the opportunity for girls to lead on the change they want to see, essential to this approach. INGOs should provide ongoing opportunities for girls to engage in research and advocacy beyond single projects, and foster networks of girl researchers and advocates to build collective power.

The transformative power of girl-led research and action

The Shifting the Power: Advancing Girl-Led Research report, followed by a girl-led action phase, demonstrates the transformative potential of adolescent girl-led research and advocacy. The action phase provides resources to enable teenage girls to advocate for, and bring about, change based on their own research findings.

Through Building power together: a girl-led research project,, adolescent girls in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Indonesia achieved various things, such as the establishment of a sexual and reproductive health and rights advocacy space within government and gender-based violence messaging on radio and TV shows.

In the Shifting the Power report, girls in Nigeria and Sierra Leone highlight poverty, child marriage, teenage pregnancy, educational barriers and gender-based violence as their key challenges. They have proposed targeted solutions, such as economic support for families, the enforcement of laws against child marriage and improved access to education. In Abuja, Nigeria, girls are using their research findings to advocate for policy changes to address issues like drug misuse among young people. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, girls are actively engaged with community leaders to address local challenges, demonstrating their capacity for leadership and advocacy. In Jigawa, Nigeria, adolescent girls are hoping to establish a Girls Resource Centre to serve as a safe space for girls to come together to share and strategize about the issues they face.

Girl-led policy change

Policy and structural change should also be girl-led, participatory and intersectional. Co-creating platforms for teenage girls to present their findings to decision makers at community, national and international levels is an important step in achieving the change adolescent girls want to see.

As we advocate for girl-led research, we must actively work to create spaces where all adolescent girls feel safe, valued and respected, and where they can share their experiences and insights with audiences who will listen, reflect and take action accordingly. Providing resources and support tailored to context is fundamental, as it equips girls with the necessary tools, training and mentorship to conduct research and advocacy effectively. Safe spaces, alongside referral pathways, must be ensured so that adolescent girls can express themselves freely and confidentially.

Supporting and harnessing adolescent girls’ leadership is not just a moral imperative but a strategic necessity for achieving gender justice. By centring adolescent girls’ voices, experiences and solutions, we can co-develop more effective, relevant and decolonial interventions.

The girl-led research methodology offers a powerful model for how to shift power to adolescent girls, paving the way for transformative change in their lives and communities. On this International Day of the Girl, let us commit to accelerating action by centring adolescent girls’ leadership in research, advocacy and action. As INGOs working with adolescent girls across the world, by supporting their leadership and holding ourselves accountable to actioning their solutions, we can break down systemic barriers and work towards a future in which gender equality and justice is not just a goal, but a reality.

ActionAid UK will shortly be launching the Girl Led Research and Action manual – reach out to [email protected] to receive more information about the launch and on how to access the manual.