Education for Empowerment: Do Literacy and Numeracy Affect Girls’ Voice?

Much of the literature on education’s multisectoral impacts focuses on attainment or years of schooling, with limited attention to foundational academic skills. Using longitudinal data on adolescent girls in Zambia, we examine whether literacy, numeracy, and nonverbal reasoning are associated with girls’ agency, measured as their ability to express opinions and advocate for themselves. The sample includes 1,171 grade 7 girls in three districts in 2017. We estimate linear regressions with school fixed effects to assess relationships between baseline skills (2017) and voice at endline (2018), accounting for baseline voice and covariates. Baseline literacy and literacy gains were significantly associated with higher endline voice scores. Baseline numeracy was not associated with voice in multivariate models, but numeracy gains were associated with higher voice. These findings suggest that learning interventions may enhance academic skills while at the same time contributing to broader goals of gender equity and girls’ empowerment.