Girlhood Studies

According to The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs the adage, “Children should be seen and not heard”, which dates back to at least the 1400s, was really directive to girls and young women: “A mayde [maiden or young girl] schuld be seen, but not herd.” The belief that girls and young women should be quiet and demure changed from being a piece of commonplace knowledge to being a written precept in the 17th century when manuals of prescriptive behavior began to be written for a gender-specific audience. For example, in a Puritan manual for young couples, published in 1612, different advice was presented to each: the husband was supposed to “[d]eal with many men, [b]e entertaining, and [b]e skilful in talk” but the wife was instructed to “[t]alk with a few, [b]e solitary and withdrawn, and [b]oast of silence.” (cited in Zipes et al. 2005: 1417).

This article addresses the growing concern with youth civic engagement by asking how contemporary U.S. girls' organizations envision girls' civic identities. Recent years have seen the growth of girls' organizations that aim to involve girls in their communities. Based on extensive document research and two ethnographic case studies, my analysis distinguishes between this emergent transformative approach and a more widespread, normative model. Transformative organizations engage girls in a sociological analysis of the conditions of their lives, believe that girls should have public authority, and encourage girls' involvement in social change projects. Normative organizations rely upon a psychological understanding of girls' problems, imagine the public as a space of threat and as being full of barriers girls that must learn to overcome, and emphasize service over political action. By comparing these two approaches, this article suggests that scholars and practitioners should carefully consider the implications of organizations for girls' relationship to the public sphere.

This article explores the immigrant journeys of Mexican immigrant adolescent girls raised in transnational families. Based on interviews conducted with this young cohort I examine how they experienced migration long before they neared the United States-Mexico border. Using a transnational approach to migration and the intersections of gender and age as analytical categories, I highlight how Mexican immigrant adolescent girls are uniquely situated within their families so as to have a different set of experiences from men, women, and adolescent boys. Their stories reveal that before migration their lives were saturated, because of their parents' departures and visits, with anticipation and imaginings about Napa Valley, California, and with interruptions of migration. Their lives always seemed to be on the brink of migration. This also means that the very reason for their parents' migration—to better provide for their children—placed the children en route, as it were, to the United States.

This article examines how working-class mothers influence their daughters' aspirations. Data was gathered from focus groups and interviews with twenty-one white and African American working-class girls and fifteen of their mothers from Southwestern Pennsylvania, United States. Research revealed that the mothers' advice is gendered, class-based, and racialized, and that it emphasizes the importance of caregiving, living near family, and financial independence and security. Qualitatively examining the messages related to work and family that working-class mothers relay to their daughters and how daughters take in these messages shows the contradictions that emerge when working-class mothers support aspiration formation.

The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in two field sites in Oslo, Norway, that involved a sample of sixty-seven children. I discuss how ten year-old girls do gender and romance in the light of “junior” and “senior” (hetero)sexuality in the social context of romance. Considering the Norwegian media's worry concerning a presumed sexualization of childhood and the disappearance of childhood, I describe in detail what happens between partners in what is known as a going-out-with-relationship. These relationships, primarily characterized by play and not by physical intimacy, illustrate that sexual innocence in childhood still exists.

The Girl Scout organization has played an important role in the lives of many girls in the United States and around the world. Despite its prominence and popularity, relatively little is known about how this organization has circulated notions of gender and how it has defined the girlhood experience for its members. Taking a longitudinal approach, we performed a content analysis of Girl Scout badges and badge requirements from 1913 to 1999. Our findings indicate that over the past century the Girl Scout organization has reduced its insistence on traditional femininity, maintained its support of members participating in traditionally masculine domains, and increased its backing of a more androgynous socialization of female youth. These changes reflect the rise of a more fluid and dynamic understanding of girlhood within the Girl Scout organization.

This article discusses problems of childbearing as experienced in rural Kenya by girls in their adolescence—a powerfully formative time of transition to adulthood. Findings reveal that girls face unique challenges and harsh choices when they are faced with pre-marital pregnancy such as emotional violence and abuse, early marriage, expulsion from school, unsafe abortion and poverty. Many Kenyans are calling on the government and communities to put into place policies and programs necessary for empowering girls with enough information to make a healthy and safe transition to adulthood.

If we took the time to listen attentively and carefully to pregnant teenagers and teen mothers what would we hear? If we invited them to articulate their messages to the adults who interact with them, speak to those who judge them, and give advice to their peers, what would they say? Th is photo-essay addresses these related questions by presenting some of the findings of an arts-based activist research project called TEEN M.O.M. (Mirrors of Motherhood). One of the goals of the project was to examine how a media production program, implemented within the context of an existing community organization, can empower teenage girls in diffi cult circumstances to share their views. In a series of workshops, the participants were invited, off ered guidance, and equipped to produce their own images—digital photographs, drawings, and collage work—so as to make visible their views on the personal and social issues that aff ect them directly. (In this photo-essay we concentrate on their photographs and off er comments taken from their writing and from video-taped interviews.) For two hours each week for thirteen weeks, the project gave these young mothers time away from their daily responsibilities and provided them with a safe space in which to focus single-mindedly on creating their images. Th e project culminated in an exhibition in which their work was shown to members of the community, policy makers, family and friends.

Girl Museum is a virtual art and social history museum dedicated to researching the unique experience of growing up female, and documenting this through telling stories and exhibiting historic and contemporary images and material culture related to this experience. At Girl Museum, we want to raise global awareness about the issues and realities of both nature and nurture that face girls today and will face them tomorrow, via the lessons of yesterday. To achieve this, we are doing original research, producing exhibitions, building an archive, and partnering with individuals who are already out there doing good work and with organizations that support them, as well as providing venues in which girls themselves can have a voice.

Review of Norma Mendoza-Denton’s Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs