I 
117TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 4134 
To support empowerment, economic security, and educational opportunities 
for adolescent girls around the world, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JUNE 24, 2021 
Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida (for herself, Mr. WALTZ, Ms. KELLY of Illinois, 
Mrs. KIM
of California, Ms. HOULAHAN, Mr. FITZPATRICK, Ms. 
DEGETTE, Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania, Ms. BASS, Mr. MOOLENAAR, Mr. 
MCGOVERN, and Mr. RUTHERFORD) introduced the following bill; which 
was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs 
A BILL 
To support empowerment, economic security, and educational 
opportunities for adolescent girls around the world, and 
for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the 
‘‘Keeping Girls in School Act’’. 
(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS.—The table of contents for 
this Act is as follows: 
Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents. 
Sec. 2. Appropriate congressional committees defined. 
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Sec. 3. Findings. 
Sec. 4. Sense of Congress. 
Sec. 5. Secondary education for adolescent girls. 
Sec. 6. Global strategy requirement. 
Sec. 7. Transparency and reporting to Congress. 
SEC. 2. APPROPRIATE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES DE-
FINED. 
In this Act, the term ‘‘appropriate congressional com-
mittees’’ means— 
(1) the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the 
Committee on Appropriations of the House of Rep-
resentatives; and 
(2) the Committee on Foreign Relations and 
the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate. 
SEC. 3. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) Adolescence is a critical period in a girl’s 
life, when significant physical, emotional, and social 
changes shape her future. 
(2) Adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable 
to HIV/AIDS, child, early and forced marriage, and 
other forms of violence which are detrimental to 
their futures, as evidenced by the following statistics: 
(A) Each year, 380,000 adolescent girls 
and young women become newly infected with 
HIV, more than 1,000 every day, and comprise 
the fastest-growing demographic for new infec-
tions in sub-Saharan Africa. 
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(B) Each year, 12,000,000 adolescent girls 
around the world are married before their 18th 
birthday, and more than 650,000,000 women 
alive today were married as children. 
(C) Child marriages often interrupt school-
ing, limit opportunities, and impact the phys-
ical, psychological and social well-being of such 
girls. Significant levels of lockdown-related dis-
ruption and economic crisis due to the COVID– 
19 pandemic could lead to at least four million 
more girls married before the age of 18 in the 
next two years. 
(D) One-quarter to one-half of girls in de-
veloping countries become mothers before the 
age of 18, and girls under 15 are five times 
more likely to die during childbirth than women 
in their 20s. As many as one million girls 
across sub-Saharan Africa may be blocked from 
returning to school due to pregnancy during 
COVID–19 school closures. 
(3) 
Before 
the 
pandemic, 
approximately 
130,000,000 girls around the world were not in 
school, and millions more failing to acquire basic 
reading, writing, and numeracy skills. With COVID– 
19 school closures affecting nearly 91 percent of the 
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world’s student population, over 743,000,000 girls 
have had their education disrupted and will face tre-
mendous barriers to returning to school when it is 
safe. 
(4) Girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are 
three times more likely than boys to be kept out of 
school, particularly in countries affected by conflict. 
(5) Due to discriminatory gender norms and ex-
pectations, disparities in access to safe and quality 
education manifest early in a girl’s life and continue 
to become more pronounced throughout adolescence. 
(6) Girls living with disabilities are less likely to 
start school and transition to secondary school than 
boys living with disabilities and other children, and 
just 1 percent of women with disabilities are literate 
globally. 
(7) While two-thirds of all countries have 
achieved gender parity in primary education, only 40 
percent have achieved gender parity in secondary 
education. 
(8) Adolescent girls who remain in school are 
more likely to live longer, marry later, and have 
healthier children. 
(9) Investing in holistic programming that en-
sures all girls complete secondary education could 
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lift gross domestic product (GDP) in developing 
economies by an average of 10 percent and every $1 
spent on such programming would generate a $2.80 
return—equivalent to billions of dollars in extra 
GDP. 
(10) Children born to women who completed 
secondary schooling or higher have 17.5-percent re-
duced odds of being off track for healthy develop-
ment. 
(11) Since July 2015, more than 100 public- 
private partnerships have been formed between the 
United States Government and external partners to 
support innovative and community-led solutions in 
targeted countries, including Malawi and Tanzania, 
to ensure adolescent girls receive a quality edu-
cation. 
(12) The United States Global Strategy to Em-
power Adolescent Girls, published in March 2016, 
has brought together the Department of State, the 
United States Agency for International Develop-
ment, the Peace Corps, and the Millennium Chal-
lenge Corporation, as well as other agencies and pro-
grams such as the President’s Emergency Fund for 
AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), to address the range of 
challenges preventing adolescent girls from attaining 
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