In this article, I examine critically the framing of the African girl child in international development discourse on menstruation and menstrual activism and address the question, “What influence have African girls had on policy or programs and to what extent have they been mere targets and objects of such policies and programs?” I analyze baseline interviews I carried out at the inception of a Zimbabwean sanitary wear intervention and shine a light on African girls as potential guides and consultants in constructing policy and programs. I show how the communitarian, Ubuntu-centred family values of rural Ndebele people provide a counterpoint to colonial and neoliberal Western-centred development approaches in addressing challenges girls face in relation to menstrual preparation and early unintended pregnancy.
{"title":"Ndebele Girls as Knowers","authors":"N. Ncube","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160106","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this article, I examine critically the framing of the African girl child in international development discourse on menstruation and menstrual activism and address the question, “What influence have African girls had on policy or programs and to what extent have they been mere targets and objects of such policies and programs?” I analyze baseline interviews I carried out at the inception of a Zimbabwean sanitary wear intervention and shine a light on African girls as potential guides and consultants in constructing policy and programs. I show how the communitarian, Ubuntu-centred family values of rural Ndebele people provide a counterpoint to colonial and neoliberal Western-centred development approaches in addressing challenges girls face in relation to menstrual preparation and early unintended pregnancy.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90966886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, the data for which I acquired through a systematic review of articles published over three years, focusing on analyzing the evolution of the situation over these past years, I discuss school-based gender violence in Cameroon. Considering the complexity of Cameroonian society and its responses to violence against girls and women, we need to establish that violence can be addressed, and we have to suggest how this can be done. From one region to another, a girl being denied access to education, being trafficked, or being forced into early marriage constitutes an experience of violence. Even though the government has been fighting these ills for the past twenty years the results show that girls are still highly vulnerable in the education system.
{"title":"Cameroon's Schools","authors":"Linda Silim Moundene","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160108","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this article, the data for which I acquired through a systematic review of articles published over three years, focusing on analyzing the evolution of the situation over these past years, I discuss school-based gender violence in Cameroon. Considering the complexity of Cameroonian society and its responses to violence against girls and women, we need to establish that violence can be addressed, and we have to suggest how this can be done. From one region to another, a girl being denied access to education, being trafficked, or being forced into early marriage constitutes an experience of violence. Even though the government has been fighting these ills for the past twenty years the results show that girls are still highly vulnerable in the education system.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90394075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ndumiso Daluxolo Ngidi, Xolani Ntinga, Ayanda Khumalo, Z. Essack
In this article, we use data generated through photovoice and focus group discussions to examine how primary school girls from two resource-poor and high-risk rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, negotiate their safety on the dangerous journey to and from school. Our findings show that girls actively identify and apply specific safe-seeking strategies by drawing on available community and interpersonal resources as they navigate their way to school. These strategies moderate risk exposure and are perceived to reduce girls’ vulnerability to victimization. While the sustainability of these strategies remains in question, it is essential to note that girls can exercise their agency in providing safety in sociocultural and geographic contexts that expose them to risk.
{"title":"South African Rural Girls’ Safety Strategies on the School Journey","authors":"Ndumiso Daluxolo Ngidi, Xolani Ntinga, Ayanda Khumalo, Z. Essack","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160109","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this article, we use data generated through photovoice and focus group discussions to examine how primary school girls from two resource-poor and high-risk rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, negotiate their safety on the dangerous journey to and from school. Our findings show that girls actively identify and apply specific safe-seeking strategies by drawing on available community and interpersonal resources as they navigate their way to school. These strategies moderate risk exposure and are perceived to reduce girls’ vulnerability to victimization. While the sustainability of these strategies remains in question, it is essential to note that girls can exercise their agency in providing safety in sociocultural and geographic contexts that expose them to risk.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89061730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This Special Issue on African Girlhoods is long overdue for many reasons, not least of which is its recognition, as guest editors Marla L. Jaksch, Catherine Cymone Fourshey, and Relebohile Moletsane point out, of the somewhat vexed history of the discourse of the African girl-child that dates back to the global development literature of the early 1990s attached to the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace, held in Beijing in September, 1995—typically referred to just as Beijing. This, and the many country and regional conferences leading up it were (and still are) game-changers in so many ways when it comes to the lives of girls and women. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that I participated readily in the early days of defining the girl-child when I was working as a short-term UNICEF consultant in Zambia to develop an agenda for the Ministry of Education and other policy actors for research about education for girls in Zambia. One of the events in which I participated in Lusaka in October 1994 as part of my fact-finding and local consulting was a meeting of 80 or more local NGO members and other Zambian women who were planning their submissions to the November 1994 African Platform for Action: Fifth African Regional Conference (Dakar) on Women preparatory to Beijing. As an observer at this meeting, I heard a presenter talk about the fact that she was one of the first women (if not the first) in Zambia to graduate from university. This was in 1994 and at the time I could see that giving any recognition and support to ordinary girls and their education was full of possibilities, if very complicated. But I regard all this as just as much a part of the development of Girlhood Studies as was the work in North America on girls and science in the late 1980s. As I note elsewhere on charting girlhood studies (Mitchell 2016) we now know that just getting more girls into science was equally complicated.
这期《非洲少女特刊》姗姗来迟,原因有很多,其中最重要的是,正如特约编辑Marla L. Jaksch、Catherine Cymone Fourshey和Relebohile Moletsane所指出的那样,它认识到,关于非洲女孩的论述有些令人困惑的历史,可以追溯到20世纪90年代初与第四次世界妇女大会有关的全球发展文献:1995年9月在北京(通常简称北京)举行的平等、发展与和平行动会议。这次会议,以及在此之前召开的许多国家和地区会议,在许多方面改变了女孩和妇女的生活(现在仍然如此)。如果我不承认,我在早期积极参与了女童的定义,当时我是联合国儿童基金会在赞比亚的短期顾问,为教育部和其他政策参与者制定一项议程,以研究赞比亚女童的教育,那将是我的疏忽。我于1994年10月在卢萨卡参加的一项活动是作为我的实况调查和当地咨询工作的一部分,这是一次由80多名当地非政府组织成员和其他赞比亚妇女参加的会议,她们正在规划向1994年11月《非洲行动纲要:第五次非洲妇女问题区域会议(达喀尔)》提交的文件,为北京的筹备工作做准备。作为这次会议的观察员,我听到一位演讲者谈到她是赞比亚第一批大学毕业生(如果不是第一个的话)之一。那是在1994年,当时我可以看到,给予普通女孩和她们的教育任何认可和支持都充满了可能性,尽管非常复杂。但我认为所有这些都是少女时代研究发展的一部分,就像20世纪80年代末北美关于女孩和科学的工作一样。正如我在其他关于女孩研究的图表(Mitchell 2016)中指出的那样,我们现在知道,让更多的女孩进入科学领域同样复杂。
{"title":"Reframing African Girlhood","authors":"C. Mitchell","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160101","url":null,"abstract":"This Special Issue on African Girlhoods is long overdue for many reasons, not least of which is its recognition, as guest editors Marla L. Jaksch, Catherine Cymone Fourshey, and Relebohile Moletsane point out, of the somewhat vexed history of the discourse of the African girl-child that dates back to the global development literature of the early 1990s attached to the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace, held in Beijing in September, 1995—typically referred to just as Beijing. This, and the many country and regional conferences leading up it were (and still are) game-changers in so many ways when it comes to the lives of girls and women. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that I participated readily in the early days of defining the girl-child when I was working as a short-term UNICEF consultant in Zambia to develop an agenda for the Ministry of Education and other policy actors for research about education for girls in Zambia. One of the events in which I participated in Lusaka in October 1994 as part of my fact-finding and local consulting was a meeting of 80 or more local NGO members and other Zambian women who were planning their submissions to the November 1994 African Platform for Action: Fifth African Regional Conference (Dakar) on Women preparatory to Beijing. As an observer at this meeting, I heard a presenter talk about the fact that she was one of the first women (if not the first) in Zambia to graduate from university. This was in 1994 and at the time I could see that giving any recognition and support to ordinary girls and their education was full of possibilities, if very complicated. But I regard all this as just as much a part of the development of Girlhood Studies as was the work in North America on girls and science in the late 1980s. As I note elsewhere on charting girlhood studies (Mitchell 2016) we now know that just getting more girls into science was equally complicated.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83517265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
i am a child of stories. i live in stories. stories carried by the water and told by the drums.
我是一个听故事的孩子。我生活在故事里。水传故事,鼓传故事。
{"title":"Odes to African Girlhood","authors":"Giramata I.","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160110","url":null,"abstract":"i am a child of stories. i live in stories. stories carried by the water and told by the drums.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73223025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
DaMaris Hill. 2022. Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood. New York: Bloomsbury
达马里斯·希尔,2022年。更好地呼吸:黑人女孩的生活。纽约:布卢姆茨伯里派
{"title":"Preciousness and Precarity","authors":"Lauren K. Alleyne","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160112","url":null,"abstract":"DaMaris Hill. 2022. Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood. New York: Bloomsbury","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90402556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I track the contribution of Tanganyikan girls to the big push for schooling that characterized the country, and the whole of Africa, from the 1940s to the late 1970s. So doing, I bring together two historiographies—works that document nationalist discourses that promoted this quick expansion of the schooling system and those that underline the agency of African girls in shaping their lives and education. Reading together girls’ writings in the press, archival documentation, and interviews with adult women, I propose a nuanced analysis of girls’ stances towards a public discourse that made their schooling a significant asset for nation-building.
{"title":"“Let's Go to School and Marry Later”","authors":"Florence Wenzek","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160105","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this article, I track the contribution of Tanganyikan girls to the big push for schooling that characterized the country, and the whole of Africa, from the 1940s to the late 1970s. So doing, I bring together two historiographies—works that document nationalist discourses that promoted this quick expansion of the schooling system and those that underline the agency of African girls in shaping their lives and education. Reading together girls’ writings in the press, archival documentation, and interviews with adult women, I propose a nuanced analysis of girls’ stances towards a public discourse that made their schooling a significant asset for nation-building.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85645009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Expanded feminist narratives on the girl child have paid little attention to how young girls have become agents of their own change and sharers of their own knowledge. In this study, we spotlight girls’ agency reinforced by institutions that transform them from recipient to agents of change and resilience. In this qualitative study, we deploy critical analysis and reflective argumentation to underscore how Women's Research and Documentation Center (WORDOC) of the Institute of African Studies University of Ibadan provided Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tactics to girls aged 10 to 18 between 2018 and 2019 at its annual WORDOC Girls’ Summit. We explore a version of African girlhood aimed at presenting institutional impacts that offer platforms for girls’ self-empowerment and girl-agency in Nigeria.
{"title":"As Knowers and Narrators","authors":"S. Omotoso, Ejemen Ogbebor","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160103","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Expanded feminist narratives on the girl child have paid little attention to how young girls have become agents of their own change and sharers of their own knowledge. In this study, we spotlight girls’ agency reinforced by institutions that transform them from recipient to agents of change and resilience. In this qualitative study, we deploy critical analysis and reflective argumentation to underscore how Women's Research and Documentation Center (WORDOC) of the Institute of African Studies University of Ibadan provided Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tactics to girls aged 10 to 18 between 2018 and 2019 at its annual WORDOC Girls’ Summit. We explore a version of African girlhood aimed at presenting institutional impacts that offer platforms for girls’ self-empowerment and girl-agency in Nigeria.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77671641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kim Heyes, Benedicte Brahic, A. Ramnund‐Mansingh, N. Ingram, S. Arun, M. Seedat‐Khan
Girls from single-parent households in South Africa (90 percent of whom are Black African or coloured) have significantly lower educational outcomes than other demographics. Through a methodology of life-history interviews, we explore the experiences of 30 women in single-headed households who have been successful in their educational endeavours as university students or graduates. Results show that pressures on girls from single-headed households to look after the family and domestic sphere and to protect their bodies from sexual abuse leave many girls depleted of the time, energy, and mental capacity required to study. Despite these challenges, these participants have escaped the perceived weight of their female burden in a post-apartheid, patriarchal society and reclaim their bodies and sense of agency through educational success.
{"title":"“I Cannot Fall Pregnant!”","authors":"Kim Heyes, Benedicte Brahic, A. Ramnund‐Mansingh, N. Ingram, S. Arun, M. Seedat‐Khan","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160107","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Girls from single-parent households in South Africa (90 percent of whom are Black African or coloured) have significantly lower educational outcomes than other demographics. Through a methodology of life-history interviews, we explore the experiences of 30 women in single-headed households who have been successful in their educational endeavours as university students or graduates. Results show that pressures on girls from single-headed households to look after the family and domestic sphere and to protect their bodies from sexual abuse leave many girls depleted of the time, energy, and mental capacity required to study. Despite these challenges, these participants have escaped the perceived weight of their female burden in a post-apartheid, patriarchal society and reclaim their bodies and sense of agency through educational success.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80184576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
based on Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2017)
改编自奇玛曼达·恩戈齐·阿迪奇(2017)的《亲爱的伊万勒,还是《15条建议》中的女权主义宣言》
{"title":"A Letter to my Daughter","authors":"G. Mbara","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160111","url":null,"abstract":"based on Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2017)","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79853586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}