Chronic absenteeism in adolescent girls is a critical hindrance to equity and wellbeing in education, but its gender-specific factors have not been adequately studied. In the context of the Ecological Systems Theory developed by Bronfenbrenner, we considered a multilevel model according to which menstrual health barriers and parental overprotectiveness significantly correlate with emotion-related withdrawal and chronic absenteeism and in which the school gender-support climate moderates the withdrawal-absenteeism relationship. The study was based on a cross-sectional survey of 592 13–18 years Chinese girls in secondary schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu based on validated five-point Likert scales and school attendance records. It was stated that menstrual health barriers ( P = .36, p = .001) and parental overprotectiveness ( P = .31, p = .001) had a positive correlation with chronic absenteeism. The withdrawal which had emotional causes was positively related with absenteeism and had a non-negligible indirect relationship between menstrual health barriers and absenteeism (indirect 0.24, 95% CI 0.18, 0.31). The withdrawal-absenteeism relationship became weaker with a more favorable gender-supportive climate (interaction 0 = −0.18, p = .001). Due to the cross-sectional and observational nature of the data, such findings must be regarded as trends of correlation and not causal outcomes. The results however point to measures such as actionable goals that cut across menstrual management resources, family autonomy support and gender-responsive school supports, which will encourage the girls to attend school on a regular basis.
Pan et al. (Thu,) studied this question.