Empowering African Grandmothers as Social Change Agents: Optimizing a Cultural Resource

In non-western hierarchically structured cultures, older women, or grandmothers, play a central role especially in the care and socialization of women and girls. In the Global South, programs supporting girls' rights and development consistently ignore the grandmother resource. In Senegal, the assets-based, grandmother-inclusive, Girls' Holistic Development (GHD) program addresses major issues regarding girls' education, child marriage, teen pregnancy and female genital mutilation. GHD empowers grandmother to support girls. A meta-synthesis of 14 earlier studies on GHD identified the impact of grandmother-inclusion on grandmothers themselves. Thematic analysis revealed positive changes in: community recognition of grandmothers' role with girls; grandmothers' knowledge on GHD; grandmothers' increased influence in family decision-making; and grandmothers' empowerment to promote community-wide change in social norms affecting adolescent girls. Based on the research data, a pathway was constructed linking grandmother-inclusion and empowerment to collective action by grandmothers to change social norms affecting girls. Empirical results of the GHD program supports the conclusion that grandmother-inclusion, can build their collective agency to actively promote change supporting girls. These results suggest that programs supporting girls' development should adopt grandmother-inclusive strategies.