'Leaving No Girl Behind'? Interrogating Gender Norms and Adolescent Agency in Pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

'Investing' in young women and girls has become a popular focus for many development actors on the idea that, for example, promoting their enrolment in school can improve their wellbeing and social status, and delay marriage, which can achieve gender equality. This approach is also shown by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as in their Goal 5 for gender equality and women's empowerment. This goal addresses these issues by calling for gender equal access to institutions (such as education, work, healthcare) and the equal representation of women in decision-making processes. However, such an understanding of gender equality excludes the role of men and boys in both perpetuating gender inequality and facing their own barriers from it, e.g. societal pressures to be an economic provider. Masculinity in Global South contexts are often homogenised as violent or oppressive in these approached to gender equality. In this research, it would be key to understand how boys were positioned and effected by previous development programmes that focused on girls, and whether this has ultimately maintained gender inequalities. Notably, there is no explicit reference to LGBT+ people or issues in the SDG agenda. By providing programming solely along the lines of 'girls (and boys)', in a non-trans inclusive way, the specific inequalities that LGBT+ people face are obscured and perpetuated. The research needs to be considerate of how to bring about gender equality that can be sensitive to the needs of non-binary people, and also recognises how to navigate these issues in contexts where LGBT+ people are not recognised. The approach to a focus on girls proposes that individuals and communities are the key to achieving women's empowerment, and overlooks the way in which social behaviours, public services, the economic market can reinforce gender inequality. It is foundational to establish the structural, institutional, and social barriers that young people directly and indirectly face according to their gender identity and social status. This can involve the ways that teachers/syllabi can implicitly discourage a girl from pursuing certain careers, lack of citizenship education, or little government funding towards infrastructure to make sexual health clinics more accessible. Therefore, it is necessary to seek out the implications of a gender equality Goal that foregoes an understanding of gender as relational and maintained by political and economic institutions. Alongside this, the research must seek out how a neoliberal context has shaped this thinking, where these ideas came from, and who benefits from this thinking. Perhaps, the 'leave no one behind' approach -seeking to include the most marginalised people - is interpreted as a focus on individuals as opposed to changing the institutions (education, health, employment) which fail to be inclusive of all people. As to understand how the 'leave no one behind' approach frames gender equality, the research could investigate the intention behind the 'leave no one behind', such as how this was formed, what civil society or activist actors were involved in forming the agenda, and who decides who is the 'most left behind'. This is not to say that there are no examples of good practice pertaining to promoting gender equality amongst adolescents. This research must look into the ways that young people of all genders have benefitted from previous development interventions and how this practice can be applied to SDG-based programmes and policy. In pointing out the aforementioned issues of focusing on girls, the research can point to alternative ways of bringing about gender equality which is long lasting and positively impacts people of all genders and ages. Most notably is how young people of all genders conceive of gender inequity in their communities and the attempts to alleviate this.