Girlhood Studies

At the heart of this Special Issue on Gender Transformation (GT) is the belief that we need to turn theory into action to achieve sustainable radical change in the lives of girls and young women. The approaches to gender and social change in this issue, rooted in the feminist values of conscientization and collective action, address the root causes of inequalities, consider redistributing power rather than optimizing girls’ and women's performance in existing unequal systems, and point to long term change. The focus is on disrupting gender norms—a phrase we favour; young people and the communities with whom we work get it! Given that gender inequality is embedded in institutions and social norms rather than individual failings, the conceptualization of GT is context-specific in its insistence on structural and multi-level change, not merely attitudinal shifts. GT denotes a fundamental change in the norms, power relations, and structural arrangements that produce and sustain gender inequality in families, communities, and institutions. From a structural perspective Barbara Risman argues that since gender is a social structure embedded simultaneously at the individual, interactional, and institutional levels, GT must engage with all three. Acknowledging the additional dimensions of transformation in postcolonial and African contexts, Oyeronke Oyewumi (2002) notes that Western gender categories, organized primarily around bodily difference and the male/female binary, cannot be applied uncritically to African social systems in which other organizing principles such as seniority may be more salient. GT in these contexts requires not only changing social practices but decolonizing the conceptual tools used to understand them. We concur with Hasmi Rajan that “[a]ny criticisms or calls for change in Southern practices should be couched within a narrative in which Northern customs are presented as equally harmful” (2018: 292).

We explore how participatory theatre can foster gender-transformative change among young people by examining the impact of “We're Just Men,” a parody song from the Theatre Making Impact program. Responding to the growing influence of the so-called manosphere, we consider how creative peer-led performance can counter toxic masculinities and promote emotional literacy among young men. By drawing on qualitative data from focus groups, interviews, and reflective writing with youth writers, performers, mentors, and educators, we illustrate how humor, parody, and embodied role modelling enable participants to question rigid gender norms. Findings suggest that this performance allowed opportunities for participants to experience empathy and vulnerability, and engage in community dialogue, thus offering a promising model for reimagining masculinity in school and public health settings.

Young people, as authors, artists, and changemakers, are incisive agents of gender-transformation. In this article, I document how Tanzanian 10- to 14-year-old children used drawing, photovoice, and digital bookmaking to identify, analyze, and envision such transformation. Drawing on Tanzanian traditions of uraghibishi and African transformative feminism, I examine how young people employed drawing, photovoice, and bookmaking to analyze and disrupt gendered challenges in their community. I demonstrate how author-artists creatively disrupted single-story narratives of gender, victimhood, and agency, offering intersectional perspectives. Through arts-based speaking back processes, they deepened their analyses of underlying causes and constructed increasingly systemic theories of change. Implications emphasize possibilities for girl/boy collaborations in gender-transformation work, and opportunities for transformative feminism and uraghibishi to invigorate gender-transformation that is systemic, child-led, and intersectional.

Girls and women in Nepal have long faced gender inequalities that limit their future choices and opportunities, particularly in Madhesh Province. For this research, I adopted a qualitative design grounded in arts-based participatory methods in engaging nine young girls and their mothers and grandmothers in intergenerational gender discussions. I used gendered cultural proverbs as prompts for reflections on and explorations of the challenges faced by women and girls, and to inspire creative expression through Mithila art. The girls then translated these discussions into Mithila artworks that were exhibited publicly to community members and policymakers. Here I interpret two artworks that present creatively grassroots gender realities and future aspirations in the ways in which the participants reimagined Mithila art as a framework for gender transformation.

I theorize Photovoice as a gender-transformative participatory visual methodology for research with refugee girls and young women. Using intersectionality, feminist visual scholarship, and decolonial praxis, I examine how Photovoice can explore the ways in which gender, age, and displacement shape educational experiences, agency, and belonging. I argue that participatory image-making enables refugee girls to reclaim their narratives, interpret their lived realities critically, and challenge the gendered norms influencing their educational trajectories. I position Photovoice as a feminist and decolonial approach that supports co-creation, reflexivity, participant-led knowledge production, and collective social critique. Drawing on methodological literature in participatory visual research, I demonstrate how Photovoice can foster gender transformation through representation, dialogue, and collective reflection.

I examine the current rise of social media trends that feature the term “girl,” such as the “I'm just a girl” trend. I read these trends as theorizing “girl” as a digital subject position that social media users of various embodied age-based and gendered identities can claim. On social media, “girl” functions as an embrace of the playful, flexible, and communal strands of femininity associated with girlhood that is distinct from the binary gender role of womanhood as well as postfeminist imaginations of girlhood. This theorization of girlhood allows us to understand girlhood as a site for gender transformation and queer identificatory possibilities that can challenge binary models of gender, childhood and adulthood, and symbolic and embodied identities.

In this article, we reflect on a gender transformative framework for disrupting gendered dynamics of influencer culture for girls. Drawing on a girl-informed, participatory life course approach to championing girls aged 9 to 15 and iterative advisory board meetings with practitioners, we explore the methodological value of co-reflective spaces for supporting girls to navigate influencer culture. We argue that in-situ co-reflexivity can be used to center girls’ agency and critical literacy while addressing structural dynamics of femininity, aspiration, and digital visibility. We contribute to methodological debates on participatory and practitioner-engaged research as tools for gender transformative change.

By analyzing the strategies of girl activists through the frameworks of Gender Transformative Approaches and childism, I examine how teenage girl feminist activism disrupts school-based sexual harassment. Drawing on ethnographic research with 11 girl activists in the South Korean SchoolMeToo Movement, I show how intersecting gender norms and age-based marginalization sustain sexual harassment cultures and silence schoolgirls’ resistance. My findings demonstrate that such activism not only identifies these structural conditions but also advances collective strategies for disruption that include reconstructing dominant understanding of teenage girls as sexual subjects, integrating #MeToo politics into formal political and school structures, and promoting gender-transformative and childist feminist education. By bridging these frameworks, I highlight the importance of addressing both gendered and age-based power relations in challenging school-based sexual harassment.

In our qualitative, community-based, Canadian study we asked girls, young women, and girl-serving professionals to reflect on the current state of girls’ mental health, the causes of mental health erosion, and what must change. They revealed that the mental load of contradictory gendered expectations, social surveillance, internalized body criticism, and constant pressure and judgement create unyielding fear and emotional distress. We highlight the social contributors to girls’ mental health, illuminating how gender-based expectations and misogyny collude to create impossible situations from which there is little chance of escaping. Gender-transformative structural change that disrupts gender norms, affirms girls’ rights to mental health, and challenges the ubiquity of gendered oppression of the world's girls and young women is crucial.

Working from Canada, Mexico, and Malawi, we developed this essay collaboratively by exchanging responses to the photos featured in the travelling exhibition Youth United Will Never Be Defeated. This exhibition is part of TRANSFORM: Engaging with Youth for Social Change, during which project, in their using participatory visual methodologies, including photovoice, young people across different global sites documented the realities that shape their lives while imagining a future based on justice. Each image is accompanied by captions and curatorial framing chosen by the young participants, thus allowing the exhibition to function not simply as representation but as a research method though which youth knowledge becomes visible, legible, and collectively discursive.