During the last few decades, there has been increasing interest in supporting girls in international development programmes, especially in the Global South. However, these interventions usually come from a top-down approach from organisations or institutions funding them. As a result, how girls engage with politics (formal and informal) in their everyday lives is lesser known and/or overlooked.

This is a collaborative research with Plan International, an NGO that has carried out a longitudinal study for 18 years in El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. This research will include the analysis of the longitudinal research to identify themes around everyday politics in different phases of childhood. The findings will inform the second phase of the project which involves onsite research. In this phase, fieldwork will be conducted using a qualitative methodology in both countries to gain a better grasp of the girls’ realities and how they exercise their politics. The combination of these two sources of data will help to answer the following questions:

• How do girls engage in politics in their everyday lives in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador?
• How does this participation change throughout different phases of childhood?
• What are the main barriers girls face throughout their lives?
• In what ways do girls’ networks influence their everyday political engagement?