This Research and Practice Note provides an overview of key thinking on social norms of relevance to challenging gender inequalities that affect adolescent girls. It defines gender norms as informal rules and shared social expectations that distinguish expected behaviour on the basis of gender. • It brings together insights from gender theory and social norms theory to help understand what influences gender norms and how they operate in particular circumstances. It distinguishes gender norms from practices (manifestations of norms) and the values that underlie norms, drawing on fieldwork in Ethiopia, Nepal, Viet Nam and Uganda. • It considers the relationship between poverty and discriminatory gender norms, and concludes that while poverty can sharpen gender discrimination, it does not always do so, and that sometimes discriminatory gender norms affect better-off girls more.
