2026 Theses Doctoral

Climate Disasters, Internal Displacement, and Adolescent Girls’ Education in the Honduran Sula Valley

Pan Algarra, Sara M.

Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, devastated Honduras in 1998. Twenty-two years later, Hurricanes Eta and Iota wreaked havoc amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Widespread flooding hit many parts of Honduras, including the Sula Valley alluvial region, a highly populated area and the country’s largest industrial hub. Hurricanes Eta and Iota affected manifold aspects of people’s lives, such as housing, water, sanitation, health, food, security, transportation, jobs, and central for this study, education.

Climate disaster studies have found that preexisting forms of social inequality influence how people experience the aftermath. Intersections between gender, race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, citizenship, education background—among other identity markers—affect the ability of individuals to cope with climate emergencies. The aftermath is gendered because it can reproduce gender inequality in complex ways. The literature on the relationship between vulnerability, gender, and climate shocks has explored how girls are particularly vulnerable in climate emergency contexts because disasters can exacerbate gender-based violence, adolescent pregnancy, early unions, and menstrual poverty. This dissertation adds an intersectional and gender perspective to the literature on climate disasters and education, examining how adolescent girls living in contexts of social inequality, climate shocks, and internal displacement in the Sula Valley understand their opportunities to pursue formal education.

A contextualized study on climate shocks, internal displacement, and adolescent girls’ education is relevant given the frequency of extreme weather events and because Honduras has high rates of adolescent pregnancy and femicides. Official data shows that more than half of adolescent girls and women experience some form of physical, psychological, sexual, or financial violence in Honduras. This dissertation employed a case study methodology including document analysis and semistructured interviews with 58 participants. Girls between the ages of 12 and 17 who had dropped out of school and girls attending public schools participated. They were all living in communities affected by poverty, climate shocks, internal displacement, and gang violence in the municipalities of La Lima and Choloma in the Sula Valley. To understand the family-based and structural opportunities and challenges to pursue schooling, family members, public school teachers and administrators, government officials, as well as representatives of civil society and international agencies were also interviewed.

This dissertation found that the relationship between climate shocks, internal displacement, and adolescent girls’ access to education in La Lima and Choloma is nonlinear and complex. Disasters and displacement contribute to socioeconomic hardship within the household, which limits opportunities for girls to pursue schooling. Emphasizing the participants’ perspectives, the study provided recommendations toward preventing school abandonment. The conclusions discuss how the analysis can inform the literature on gender and climate disaster vulnerability. It is not that girls are more or less vulnerable than boys but rather that climate emergencies can affect girls and boys differently based on context. This observation has implications for the field of comparative and international education. It highlights the importance of identifying how gender is uniquely experienced in order to develop policies that can guarantee access to education for girls and boys navigating climate disasters and the aftermath.