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Agency and Opportunity in Early Adolescence: Investigating Gender-Specific Patterns in Developmental Trajectories
Linnea A Zimmerman1, Celia Karp1, Astha Ramaiya2
1Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Journal of Adolescence
|July 10, 2025
Summary
Parental and neighborhood factors shape adolescent agency differently by gender. Interventions promoting adolescent empowerment must consider these gender-specific influences for effective outcomes.
Area of Science:
- Adolescent Development
- Sociology
- Public Health
Background:
- Limited research exists on how opportunity structures, including parental influence and neighborhood context, affect adolescent agency development.
- Understanding gender-specific relationships in adolescent agency is crucial but under-explored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine gender-specific relationships between opportunity structures and the development of adolescent agency.
- To identify how individual, household, parental, and neighborhood factors influence adolescent Freedom of Movement and Voice.
Main Methods:
- Longitudinal data from 1188 boys and 1153 girls (ages 10-14 at enrollment) from the Global Early Adolescent Study in Kinshasa (2017-2022).
- Group-based trajectory modeling to identify gender-specific agency clusters (Freedom of Movement, Voice).
- Multinomial logistic regression to assess the association of opportunity structures with cluster membership.
Main Results:
- Three distinct agency trajectories were identified for both genders.
- Parental monitoring was linked to agency development in boys but not girls; parental closeness was more influential for girls.
- Neighborhood safety positively impacted agency for both genders, while neighborhood trust showed gender-specific associations with Freedom of Movement and Voice.
Conclusions:
- Adolescent empowerment interventions require gender-sensitive approaches, acknowledging differential influences of parental and neighborhood structures.
- Interventions may need gender-specific components to effectively foster adolescent agency development.
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