Girlhood Studies

In September, 2008, a month after Jackie Kirk’s untimely death in Afghanistan, Claudia organized a special gathering of her class on Women, Education and Development at McGill University. The gathering was made up of Claudia’s graduate students, a group of scholars, friends of Jackie’s, her parents and other relatives. The seminar was dedicated to Jackie—looking back, but also looking ahead to what could be done to keep alive the spirit and energy of her work across so many different aspects of education in post-conflict settings, women teachers as peacebuilders and girls’ education. Similarly, this issue offers a remembrance, a celebration, and a moving forward in relation her life and work.

I am honoured to have been invited to write an introduction for this special issue of Girlhood Studies commemorating the life and work of Jackie Kirk. I first met Jackie at a conference in Washington in 1998. She subsequently spent several weeks at Sussex University in 2001 working on her doctorate on women teachers in development contexts. Later she contributed to several edited collections I was involved in. Her determination to work for the improvement of girls’ education in those parts of the world where access is frequently denied and where women’s lives are particularly difficult was very apparent. Th is belief in the possibility of change in the most desperate of circumstances and the importance of education in helping women and girls rebuild their lives in conflict-torn countries was to cost Jackie her life in Afghanistan in August 2008. She was that rare individual—an activist and advocate as well as an academic and researcher—committed equally to the pursuit of knowledge and to action for change. Jackie believed that we can and should make a difference.

In this article we discuss the ways in which images of girls are understood to represent broader international development discourses related to girls' education. This piece was originally written for the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI), conceived with UNICEF out of their interest in determining whether images they produce accurately represent policies and processes they engage in on behalf of girls' education; that report was UNICEF's contribution to the UNGEI partnership. The premise that visual analysis contributes to the study of girlhood was reified in this study which revealed the many deep and sometimes conflicting meanings that diverse viewers place on images.

This paper examines how specific femininities have been constructed in Palestinian refugee camps in south Lebanon through the intersecting discourses of gender and nation. Through these discourses, Palestinian girls and women have been positioned largely as biological reproducers, gatekeepers, metaphors, ideological reproducers and cultural transmitters of the nation. This has worked to shape Palestinian girls' upbringing in the home and in the community and presented them with limited gender scripts from which to construct their identities and imagine their futures. However, Palestinian females have also exercised agency to gain the most advantageous position available to them at any given time in Palestinian society. Although structural, legal and cultural barriers have severely limited their participation in political activism, education and paid work, Palestinian females in Lebanon have constructed their identities through Islamic feminism, and to a lesser extent, secularism. Moreover, these identities are continually being transformed through the processes of resistance, negotiation and accommodation.

Post-conflict settings often contain high levels of risk for war-affected girls, yet these same settings also support hope for them. In such contexts, what risks exist for girls and how do they construct responses to these risks? is article is based on an ethnographic study which included a cohort of fifteen girls who had been caught up in the decade-long war in Sierra Leone, a war noted for its gender-based viciousness. Having lived through horrific situations, a major task of these girls has been to make meaning of, and respond to, the risks existing within their post-conflict environments. Following an analysis of the current context of the lives of these girls, this article examines the risks the girls face in their daily lives and the strategies they employ as strength-based responses to these risks.

This paper reports on an evaluation of a program in Sierra Leone that sought to support the community reintegration of young women and girls formerly associated with armed groups and forces. In the absence of baseline data, we used locally-derived indicators of reintegration and village timelines to conduct a retrospective cohort study of the progress of 142 girls and young women towards achievement of community reintegration following their experience of abduction. Although girls and young women in both intervention and comparison communities had made progress towards integration, the intervention was associated with improved mental health outcomes and higher ratings on some aspects of marriage quality. For those who had found the greatest challenges in reintegrating, the intervention additionally appeared to support community acceptance and inclusion in women's bondo activities.

Conflict affects girls differently from boys—their rights are ignored, their responsibilities changed, and their lives altered forever by war. Girls face discrimination on at least two counts: because they are young and because they are female. We focus here on the changing nature of war and conflict and what this means for girls' health, economic well-being, physical security and protection, and also for their resilience and empowerment. We examine how girls are uniquely affected by, and respond to, conflict, its build-up and its aftermath. We assess the role of the institutions that have a duty to protect and support girls in conflict-affected states, and explore the reasons why policy actors do not take girls into account in their responses to violent conflict. We outline recommendations for action in terms of girls' education, harnessing girls' resilience and encouraging their empowerment.

The experience of girlhood is shifting in Tanzania as family structure is altered by economic migration and the impact of HIV/AIDS. Also significant is the influence of globalization and global imagery, which are shaping the nature of girlhood and the experience of transitioning to young womanhood. A deeper understanding of how globalizing influences are changing girls' growing up experiences, from the perspectives of the girls themselves and the adults who intersect with them in their daily lives is essential. A rural versus urban comparative case study was conducted in the Kilimanjaro region of northern Tanzania, which explored the perspectives of girls and adults through a range of methodologies. Both adults and girls expressed concerns that globalization is negatively influencing the transition to young womanhood, with girls feeling much more appreciative of the new gendered opportunities provided by the influx of external influences.

This article examines the practical construction and effects of the schoolgirl as an emergent social category in contemporary Kenyan Maasai society against mainstream development's figuring of the girl-child. The paper relies upon ninety-eight interviews with schoolgirls between the ages of ten and seventeen in nine primary schools in Kajiado District, Kenya. A contradictory resistance to traditional gender norms and social forms characterizes the schoolgirls' narratives of education and development in their daily lives. These narratives are embedded in larger questions regarding the transnational intersections of ethnicity and gender in the formation of local identities in marginalized indigenous communities in postcolonial Kenya. Without disputing the practical necessities of educating girls, I problematize the seamless rhetoric concerning formal schooling as a neutral public good in order to open up the complex conversation about educational access and attainment in the global south today.

This report aims to identify the individual and external factors that have engendered the development of resilience among Ethiopian secondary school girls. Pact Ethiopia initiated this study on resilience as a component of the GET-SET project in order to better understand how girls overcome and pursue their education despite multifarious adversities in their personal lives and in the wider environment. The GET SET project is funded by the Oak Foundation, a donor which funds activities to combat global social and environmental concern that have a major impact on the lives of the disadvantaged, particularly in relation to child abuse, human rights and women’s development. The GET SET project works to empower girls whose life circumstances put them at risk of sexual exploitation and abuse in their communities and school environment. GET SET builds on a sister project of Pact Ethiopia, Girls’ Empowerment and Management Project (GEM), which provided significant academic strengthening, economic strengthening and life skills training inputs into girls’ lives over a two-year period. GET SET operates around the vicinity of fifteen secondary schools in three regions of Ethiopia: Amhara, Gambella and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR).

Poem by Charlotte Hussey

Jackie Kirk’s death is an unspeakable loss to all of us, to the field of education and to the communities who will continue to benefit from her tremendous intellectual and personal contributions. We at UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) continue to honour her memory through our commitment to education for children and communities aff ected by conflict.

Although I am the 2009 Jackie Kirk Fellow, it was only through her words and her work that I had the privilege of getting to know Dr Jackie Kirk so I feel a sense of loss in not having had the opportunity to hold dialogues and debate with someone who had accomplished so much good in the world in such a short time. I know I would have learned even more from her in person. In her writing, it is evident that Jackie’s happiness and joy arose from ensuring that all those who were marginalized were not forgotten, and, more importantly, were equipped with the tools to begin the process of accessing a better life. We can only hope to carry on the tremendous work that had already been undertaken by Jackie in order to pay tribute to her life, her spirit and her passion. She will be equally missed by those who were fortunate enough to have worked with her and those who come to know her through her work.

This piece was written shortly after Jackie Kirk’s death. At that time, I was a student in a Master’s course on Women, Education and Development at McGill University. I am now about to begin my PhD at McGill University.