From the girl child to girls' rights

Abstract

Within the development context, much of the new interest in girls has occurred under the rubric ‘the girl child’, which has become an increasingly common phrase on international and national platforms. This paper, based largely on field and documentary research across East, South and Southeast Asia, suggests that this platform has not translated into effective, sustained or transformative national programmes or local projects in support of girls. It also argues that the cause of girls might be served better by an emphasis on girls' rights embedded in frameworks that both gender entitlements and expectations of children and take campaigns directly into the familial environment.

Notes

This paper is based on field visits to China, Pakistan, Indonesia and Thailand, extensive reading of demographic and ethnographic studies and unicef and other donor documentation across East, South and Southeast Asia.

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4 unicef, To be Born Female.

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11 This study included situational analyses, profiles and supporting documentation for China, South Korea, Mongolia, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Pacific. For full report of this study see, E Croll, Gender Inequalities among Children in the East Asian Pacific Region, Bangkok: unicef, 2001.

12 unicef-goi (Government of Indonesia), Challenges to a New Generation: The Situation of Children and Women in Indonesia 2000, Jakarta: unicef Indonesia, 1999, pp 67, 82; unicef China, Children and Women of China: A unicef Situation Analysis, Beijing: unicef, 1995, pp 25, 68; unesco, Integrating Girl Child Issues into Population Education, Bangkok: unesco, 1997, pp 14 – 15.

13 unicef, Education for Girls: Lifeline to Development, New York: unicef, 1995, p 3.

14 Ibid, pp 2 – 3.

15 unicef, Children First, Issue 38, New York: unicef, 1998, p 12.

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21 For a summary of the findings of these and other ethnographic studies, see Croll, Endangered Daughteres; SH Potter & J Potter, China's Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp 228 – 229; C Ikels, ‘Setting accounts: the intergenerational contract in the age of reform’, in D Davis & S Harrell (eds), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, pp 307 – 333; CN Milwertz, Accepting Population Control: Urban Chinese Women and the One-Child Family Policy, London: Curzon Press, 1997, pp 145, 196; L Shuzuo & Z Chuzhu, ‘Gender differences in child survival in rural China: a country study’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, New York, 25 – 27 March 1999; K Karpardia, Siva and her Sisters: Gender, Caste and Class in Rural South India, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995; and P Jeffrey & R Jeffrey, Don't Marry Me to a Plowman! Women's Everyday Lives in Rural North China, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, pp 39, 69.

22 See E Croll, ‘The intergenerational contract in the changing Asian family’, Oxford Journal of Development Studies, forthcoming, December 2006.

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25 M King Whyte, ‘The persistence of family obligations in Baoding’, in King Whyte (ed), China's Revolutions and Intergenerational Relations, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003, pp 130 – 132, 168 – 188; Y Shengming & I Chi, ‘Living arrangements and adult children's support for the elderly in the new urban areas of mainland China’, in I Chi, NL Chappell & J Lubben (eds), Elderly Chinese in Pacific Rim Countries: Social Support and Integration, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001, p 216; Y Yunxiang, Private Life under Socialism, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003, pp 180 – 181; JB Leung, ‘Family support and community-based service in China’, in Chi et al, Elderly Chinese in Pacific Rim Countries: Social Support and Integration, p 177; Sudha & Rajan, ‘Female demographic disadvantage in India’, p 275; and L Packiam, ‘Caring for the aged: emerging alternatives’ in LT Bhai (ed), Ageing: An Indian Perspective, New Delhi: Decent Books, 2002, p 217.

26 P Alston (ed), The Best Interests of the Child: Reconciling Culture and Human Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994; J Boyden & V Rialp, ‘Children's rights to protection from economic exploitation’, in JR Himes (ed), Implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Resource Mobilisation in Low Income Countries, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1995.

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28 For a summary of these ethnographic findings, see Croll, Endangered Daughters.

29 D Grover, Tomorrow's Woman, Today's Child, Bangkok: unicef, 2000, p 29.

30 Croll, Endangered Daughters.

31 H Rydstrom, ‘Rural Vietnamese girls’ socialisation', report for Swedish Save the Children Fund, September 1999, p 10; unicef and Ateneo Wellness Centre, ‘How we raise our daughters and sons: child rearing and gender socialisation in the Philippines’, Manila: unicef and the Ateneo Wellness Centre, 1999.

32 Potter & Potter, China's Peasants, p 193; CN Milwertz, Accepting Population Control, pp 136 – 138; S Chaturvedi, Youth Career Development Programme: Making a Difference to Children and Youth in Thailand at Risk from Exploitation, Bangkok: unicef, 1998, p 6; PF Kelly & D Bach Le, Trafficking in Humans from and within Vietnam, Hanoi: unicef and other agencies, September 1999, p 41; and Rydstrom, ‘Rural Vietnamese girls' socialisation’, p 9.

33 unicef, Children Have Rights Too!, Manila: unicef, 1999.

34 unicef and Ateneo Wellness Centre, ‘How we raise our daughters and sons’.

35 Government of the Philippines and unicef, Master Plan of Operations between the Government of the Philippines and unicef , Fifth Country Programme for Children, 1998.