Girlhood Studies

In this, the first issue, an unthemed one, of Girlhood Studies of the new quarter-century, there is a beautiful lining up of what must surely be regarded as evidence of transnationalism in that although each author is from a different country—Canada, Ghana, Indonesia, Japan, Israel, the United States, and Australia—the concerns are relevant internationally: the privileging of white heterosexual girls; the imposition of cultural taboos and rules on menstruating girls; the frequent failure to understand the differing realities of girls; the subversive potential of girls to undermine sexist privilege; the need for empowered girls still having to navigate disciplinary practices; and the ways in which changing social conditions govern the treatment of even pre-school-age girls. Appropriately enough, we end this issue with a review of one of the books, Girls in Global Development: Figurations of Gendered Power (2023), in the Berghahn series, Transnational Girlhoods. This range, which might, on the one hand, seem accidental, suggests, on the other, the rich body of feminist work that is inspired by girls’ successes as well as by daunting needs that result from inequalities.

In Western society, girlhood and girl power are constructed largely in terms of white heteronormativity. Correspondingly, American television neglects to portray diverse girlhoods and modes of empowerment realistically, privileging white, cis-hetero representations. However, the teen drama series The Wilds offers a somewhat nuanced portrayal of girls, racial diversity, and queerness. We apply intersectional feminist critiques of girlhood and girl power to assess how The Wilds challenges US media industry norms by centering young, empowered Indigenous and queer girls, as well as to examine how the series represents feminism. We argue that more diverse portrayals of girlhood and empowerment in the media are needed as these may promote greater self-acceptance amongst BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ girls.

Menstrual taboos, despite their varying manifestations across cultures, remain a universal phenomenon that profoundly affects the lives of women and girls worldwide. In this article, I draw on data collected in 2021 as part of an ongoing study in rural Ghana that focuses on girls’ experiences of imposed rules, specifically a ban believed to have been enforced by a deity that prohibits them from crossing a sacred river during menstruation. I demonstrate how girls are subjected to structural violence and perpetual discrimination because of the widespread belief that menstrual blood renders them impure. The narratives shared by the participants highlight the complex interplay between tradition, social norms, and individual agency in revealing the deep-rooted fears and beliefs that underpin adherence to these cultural prohibitions.

In this article we examine the discourse surrounding girlhood in Indonesia through a scoping review of research and gray literature from 2013 to 2022, alongside reference to a workshop with researchers and advocates. Themes related to sexuality and reproduction are dominant in our findings. We argue that the scholarly and civic engagements with knowledge about girls and young women in Indonesia limit the modality of knowledge production and change. We propose a shift towards critical approaches in the investigation of girlhood in Indonesia and the Global South that involves a commitment to epistemic gathering to develop methodologies that include interrogating our assumptions, contextualizing girlhood, and fostering interdisciplinary collaborations to better understand the diverse realities of girls and young women in Indonesia and beyond.

In this article, I demonstrate how schoolgirls not only undermined the demands of the government's educational policy through the acts of cooking and eating but also recreated the meaning of the mouth as an organ for eating and speaking; they turned this orifice into a tool to carve out a new space in and against the patriarchal society that imposed strictures on them and silenced them. I track traces of the ideology and performance of cooking, eating, and talking that unfolded beyond the classroom by examining a diverse set of representations of schoolgirls in girls’ magazines that depicted the mouth as an iconic, if hitherto unacknowledged, symbol of modern Japanese schoolgirls.

Studies note that feminism promotes women's and girls’ empowerment, and online feminist activity has become a central area of feminist socialization because of its growing popularity. In this study, we explore the lived experiences of Israeli girls aged 16 to 19 who self-identified as feminists and focus on their encounters on an online feminist intra-generational platform. Drawing on these interviews, we discuss the role that social media played in their feminist development. We highlight two contradictory experiences in that while the girls describe their online activities as empowering, they also had to navigate the disciplining practices and power relations on these feminist platforms.

For over a century, Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA) has shaped the experiences of American girls with a curriculum crafted in response to changing social conditions. In this article, I examine how the contemporary GSUSA organization seeks to develop the youngest Girl Scouts. Through an analysis of the Daisy and Brownie curriculum and the skill development encouraged by activity options, I demonstrate how GSUSA produces the neoliberal girl subject via the program pillars of STEM, Entrepreneurship, and Life Skills. Starting in kindergarten, Girl Scouts are encouraged to become can-do girls or future girls prepared for the global economy. I provide further evidence of the production of neoliberal girlhood and highlight how these efforts have extended to early elementary school.

Children's understandings of society, and the possibilities of their personal trajectories in it, are heavily influenced by narratives with which they have been raised. Ways of doing gender are learned, and they proliferate, via children's literature. By focusing on three key series by Anh Do, I examine how girlhoods are constructed in Australian children's literature. In Do's series WeirDo, Hotdog, and Wolf Girl, girls take on a diversity of roles from tertiary love interest to protagonist, and forms from anthropomorphic animal to the dubiously human. Deploying post-coding analysis, I explore the imaginative possibilities of doing girlhood by examining the appearances, behaviors, and relationships of female characters in these texts and question if the three series can—or should—be upheld to the same standards.

Melanie Kennedy. 2018. Tweenhood: Femininity and Celebrity in Tween Popular Culture. London, UK: I.B. Tauris.

Heather Switzer, Karishma Desai and Emily Bent (Eds.). 2023. Girls in Global Development: Figurations of Gendered Power. New York: Berghahn Books.