October 11 2022 marked the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl (IDG). In partnership with Plan International (Plan), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) hosted a webinar which presented the key findings of Plan’s Asia and the Pacific Girl’s Leadership Index (GLI). Over the last decade, there has been increased attention to issues facing girls and opportunities for girls themselves to speak to their concerns. This was the unique feature of the webinar with the participation of two girls from the Asia and the Pacific region.

Despite significant progress in education, girls continue to encounter discrimination as they face the double burden of being young and female - which is further intensified when it intersects with poverty, ethnicity, or disability. Plan developed the GLI to measure the opportunities of adolescent girls and young women to develop and demonstrate their leadership capabilities, their unique voice in the region, the gaining of support for their choices and collective and individual power.

Plan’s GLI uses available data from globally recognized databases (including the World Bank and UN), to measure the opportunities of adolescent girls and young women in 19 South and Southeast Asian countries and 14 Pacific Island member countries. For each country, the GLI presents rankings for girls’ leadership across six core domains: education, health, economic opportunities, protection, political voice and representation, and national laws and policies, establishing benchmarks for the areas that impact girls’ opportunities to develop and demonstrate leadership capabilities.

ADB and Plan have been cooperating since 2013 and have an existing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Under the MOU, ADB and Plan seek to promote the important role of women, girls, and youth, in order to achieve the vision of a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific. This webinar was a joint activity which fell under the auspices of the MOU and was open to an internal and external audience.