Negotiation lessons boost schooling and earnings for Zambian girls, now reaching Afghan youth

Over more than a decade, a group of US academics gathered data on Zambian adolescents who received twelve hours of negotiation instruction from local young women. Compared with a control group that only attended empowerment sessions, the trained girls stayed in school longer, earned college degrees and were less likely to marry much older men. Professor Corinne Low of the Wharton School explained that the curriculum taught participants to view negotiators as partners and to show respect for parents through gestures such as kneeling or wearing traditional clothing.

Follow-up surveys showed parents observed greater respect and cooperation from their daughters. The model has been incorporated into Zambia’s national curriculum and replicated elsewhere, most recently by the NGO Free to Run, which has delivered the adapted material to roughly 1,200 Afghan girls online, aiding them in household negotiations and interactions with Taliban members. The researchers are now preparing a fifteen-year follow-up with the original cohort, now women in their twenties.