The World Bank is launching aninitiative aimed at addressing the economic needs ofadolescent girls and young women in poor or post-conflictcountries. Working together with governments, donors,foundations, and private sector partners, the Bank proposesto develop and test a core set of promising interventions topromote the economic empowerment of adolescent girls andyoung women. This paper undertakes a review of existingpolicies and programs designed to promote labor forceparticipation of young women in developing countries. Whileprograms that directly address marriage or fertility caninfluence young women's labor force participation, thefocus of this paper is on programs primarily addressingemployment. Some programs for promoting young people'stransition into the labor market take a minimalisticapproach (for example, concentrating on skills trainingalone). Other employment programs, particularly thosetargeted to young women, simultaneously address multipleconstraints limiting participation (for example, lack ofskills, limited mobility, child care needs, and lack ofsexual and reproductive health information). The goal ofthis paper is to unpack and assess what elements of programdesign are essential to promoting young women'stransition to the labor market. The paper is organized asfollows: section one gives introduction. Section twoprovides an overview of some of the major trends and issuesfacing young women in the labor market in an internationalcontext. Section three describes a selection of bestpractice programs, some of which are focused exclusively onemployment training and others of which take a moreintegrated approach to providing gender-targeted adolescentservices. Section four details the lessons learned from theimplementation and evaluation of these programs, andconsiders the circumstances under which a minimalist versuscomprehensive or integrated approach may be most effective.Section five concludes and summarizes the policy and program recommendations.
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