**Besides the social context of poverty and lack of opportunities, gender norms are also powerful in keeping girls from aspiring to economic activity, which may create a vicious circle.** Most women out of work and out of school who were interviewed also had female family members and peers who formed families during adolescence. This shapes their views of what is normal, acceptable and socially desirable. If young women perceive their roles as that of being wives, mothers, and not to be working for an income unless there is physical need for it, they will likely not aspire to do something different (gender effect). However, economic opportunities are important catalyzers for agency.<sup>67</sup> Not only will these women have lower aspirations related to employment and paid work, but they will also not accumulate the necessary endowments to succeed in the labor markets. This may have important negative effects also on their children, who will grow up in similarly vulnerable situations and conditions of poverty and gender inequality, framing their preferences and aspirations based on those.

**<mark>The heterogeneity among youth out of work and out of school calls for a multipronged approach to reach these different groups. First,</mark> a challenge among all groups is the external barriers faced to access economic and educational opportunities:** limited supply of governmental interventions and too stringent eligibility criteria (e.g., ENEM, Jovem Aprendiz, PROUNI, etc); inadequate times and methodologies of adult education and technical courses offered; lack of financial support; lack of secure and safe transportation; lack of care services; among others. Nevertheless, there is the need to go beyond these external factors to effectively reach youth.

**Second, a vital step is building youth’s agency - their capacity to aspire and take consistent action – to support them in creating and pursuing life projects that go beyond their limited perceptions of what is achievable.** In other words, it is likely insufficient to increase the supply of technical schools with the objective of facilitating youth’s participation in labor markets if this is not associated with interventions that: facilitate access to information about opportunities and how they can change their lives; instill a sense of belonging and preparedness for youth who feel the opportunities available are not for them; offer support or mentorship arrangements that help them cope with the difficulties associated the pursuit of a goal that requires challenging their mental frames of possibility.  The paper shows that the promotion of aspirations related to work and education among youth, particularly women, is an important entry-point for programs and policies. It may be important to also offer young women and men higher-order cognitive and socio-emotional skills training.  Programs which seek to improve higher-order cognitive skills build on basic cognitive competencies of literacy and math, and include skills such as critical thinking, decision-making, organization, efficiency, problem solving, written and oral communications (Cunningham and Villaseñor 2014). Socio-emotional skill components training can equip young people

> 67 Research on norms and agency drawing on data from women and men in 20 countries in all regions, for example, concluded that “women’s ability to work for pay... may be one of the most visible and game-changing events in the life of modern households and all communities.” (Muñoz Boudet et al. 2014)

34