http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9859-5422
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Abstract
Child marriage has gained increased international prominence over the past decades. Organisations working with the issue have promoted empowering girls as the best strategy to address it. Informed by postcolonial feminist theory, this article will locate these discourses in broader ‘turn to the girl’ and ‘turn to agency’ in international development, analysing how Third World girlhood, agency, resistance and voice are conceptualised. Girls are constructed as threatened by their families and communities, with agency exercised through resistance and materialised by their voice. I argue that this ignores the complexity of decision-making processes and broader structural factors related to child marriage, so that interventions providing ‘empowerment-as-information’ for girls to be agents of change instead leave them in a state of informed powerlessness.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Dr Nicola Smith (University of Birmingham, UK) and Dr Emma Foster (University of Birmingham, UK) for their comments and support. An earlier version of this article was presented at the International Studies Association (ISA) South Conference in October 2017.
Notes
1. Prominent examples are the Girl Effect, launched by the Nike Foundation in 2008, and the Girl Up campaign, launched by the United Nations Foundation in 2010.
2. Moeller, The Gender Effect; Hickel, “The ‘Girl Effect’”; Shain, “The Girl Effect”; Switzer, “(Post)Feminist Development Fables”; Hayhurst, “The ‘Girl Effect’”, among others.
3. Although prevalent, the issue of child marriage in developed countries is under examined and usually referred to as affecting immigrant communities only.
4. Berents, “Hashtagging Girlhood”; Switzer, “(Post)Feminist Development Fables.”
5. Gill and Donaghue, “As If Postfeminism”; Madhok et al., “Introduction”; Wilson, “Agency as ‘Smart Economics.’”
6. Shepherd, Gender, Violence and Security; Milliken, “The Study of Discourse.”
7. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes”; Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders; Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak.”
8. Fairclough, Analysing Discourse.
9. Shepherd, Gender, UN Peacebuilding; Shepherd, Gender, Violence and Security.
10. The time range was determined because child marriage emerged as a prominent issue in the international agenda especially from 2000 onwards and markedly after 2010.
11. Shepherd, Gender, UN Peacebuilding, 26.
12. For instance, as of April 2019, the Girls Not Brides partnership has over 1000 members in 95 countries.
13. Girls Not Brides, Theory of Change; Glinski et al., Child, Early, and Forced Marriage; Malhotra et al., Solutions to End Child Marriage; Jain and Kurz, New Insights.
14. Pande et al., Improving the Reproductive Health; Edmeades et al., Improving the Lives.
15. Erulkar and Muthengi, “Evaluation of Berhane Hewan”; Muthengi and Erulkar, Building Programmes to Address Child Marriage; Psaki, Addressing Early Marriage.
16. LEHER, Strengthening Existing Systems.
17. Diop et al., Evaluation of Long-term Impact.
18. Kosky et al., “Has Child Marriage Declined”; Kalamar et al., “Interventions to Prevent Child Marriage”; Parsons and McCleary-Sills, Preventing Child Marriage; Paina et al., Piloting L3M for Child Marriage; Pathfinder International, Raising Age of Marriage.
19. Nanda et al., Making Change with Cash.
20. Chae and Ngo, Global State of Evidence; Malhotra et al., Solutions to End Child Marriage.
21. Buchmann et al., Power vs Money.
22. Girls Not Brides, Theory of Change; Women’s Refugee Commission, Girl No More; Save the Children, Every Last Girl; Greene, Ending Child Marriage; Warner et al., More Power to Her, among others.
23. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes”; Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders.
24. Girls Not Brides, It Takes a Movement; IMC Worldwide, Independent Verification and Evaluation; Warner et al., More Power to Her.
25. Glinski et al., Child, Early, and Forced Marriage.
26. Parpart, “Lessons from the Field,” 41.
27. Kabeer, “Resources, Agency, Achievements.”
28. Hickel, “The ‘Girl Effect.’”
29. Hayhurst, “Girls as the ‘New Agents’”; Shain, “The Girl Effect”; Wilson, “Agency as ‘Smart Economics.’”
30. Koffman and Gill, “The Revolution.”
31. Koffman et al., “Girl Power and ‘Selfie Humanitarianism.’”
32. Hayhurst, “The ‘Girl Effect.’”
33. Sensoy and Marshall, “Missionary Girl Power.”
34. Koffman and Gill, “The Revolution.”
35. Ibid.
36. Jain and Kurz, New Insights, 2.
37. Wilson, “Agency as ‘Smart Economics’”; Hemmings and Kabesh, “Feminist Subject of Agency.”
38. Gonick et al., “Rethinking Agency.”
39. Gill and Donaghue, “As If Postfeminism,” 253.
40. https://www.plan.ie/stories/decide/ (emphasis added).
41. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9mpjDjrvaM0J:https://caretippingpoint.org/innovation/walk-in-her-shoes/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us (emphasis added).
42. Gill, “Critical Respect”; Wilson, “Agency as ‘Smart Economics.’”
43. Hickel, “The ‘Girl Effect.’”
44. Khoja-Moolji, “Doing the ‘Work of Hearing,’” 748.
45. Gill and Donaghue, “Postfeminism”; Madhok et al., “Introduction”; Wilson, “Agency as ‘Smart Economics.’”
46. Khoja-Moolji, “Doing the ‘Work of Hearing,’” 758.
47. Ibid.
48. Women’s Refugee Commission, Girl No More; Care International, To Protect Her Honour.
49. Care International, To Protect Her Honour, 9.
50. Pande, “I Arranged My Own Marriage”; Hickel, “The ‘Girl Effect’”; Madhok, “Action, Agency, Coercion”; Mahmood, Politics of Piety.
51. Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 8.
52. Pande, “I Arranged My Own Marriage.”
53. Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, 49.
54. Shain, “The Girl Effect.”
55. Ang, “I’m a Feminist.”
56. Parpart, Choosing Silence.
57. Girls Not Brides, It Takes a Movement, 38.
62. Khoja-Moolji, “Doing The ‘Work of Hearing.’”
63. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes.”
64. Koffman et al., “Girl Power and ‘Selfie Humanitarianism.’”
65. Nirantar Trust, Early and Child Marriage in India, 54.
66. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak”; Ozkazanc-Pan, “Postcolonial Feminist Research.”
67. Jones, “Talking Cure.”
68. Jones, “Talking Cure”; Khoja-Moolji, “Doing The ‘Work of Hearing.’”
69. Khoja-Moolji and Niccolini, “Watch Me Speak.”
70. Parpart, Choosing Silence.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid., 9.
73. Khoja-Moolji, “Doing The ‘Work of Hearing.’”
74. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes.”
75. Wells, “Violent Lives.”
76. Hayhurst, “Girls as the ‘New Agents.’”
77. Girls Not Brides, It Takes a Movement, 39.
78. Plan International, Child Marriage in Bangladesh.
79. Warner et al., More Power to Her, 20.
80. For instance, http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/girls-voices/india-learning-communication-skills-stopped-roshanaras-child-marriage/; http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/girls-voices/bangladeshi-girls-say-no-child-marriage-words/; http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/girls-voices/believe-can/, among others.
81. Parpart, Choosing Silence, 2.
82. Care International, Cultural Context.
83. Gage, Coverage and Effects.
84. Warner et al., More Power to Her, 26.
85. Greene, Ending Child Marriage, 10.
86. Malhotra el al., Solutions to End Child Marriage; Diop et al., Evaluation of Long-term Impact.
87. IMC Worldwide, Independent Verification and Evaluation.
88. Girls Not Brides, It Takes a Movement; Save the Children, Every Last Girl; Malhotra et al., Solutions to End Child Marriage.
89. Malhotra et al., Solutions to End Child Marriage; Jain and Kurz, New Insights.
90. IMC Worldwide, Independent Verification and Evaluation, 47.
91. Eyben, “Conceptualising Policy Practices.”
92. Ibid., 24.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Thais Bessa
Thais Bessa is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research uses postcolonial feminist theory to examine the discourses involved in the emergence of child and early marriage as an international issue, especially how Third World girlhood and female agency are conceptualised. She has an MSc in Forced Migration (Distinction) from the University of Oxford and over 10 years of experience in international development and human rights, having worked at different United Nations agencies and international NGOs across several countries.