Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
Many of the chapters of this book end on a tentatively hopeful note, pointing to the incredible creativity and determination of these girls in their fight to be recognized and taken seriously as activists, and to be given a meaningful say in their communities and beyond. But can one seriously speak of hope at a time when so many girls across the globe are facing a rollback of their most basic rights? This chapter sets out why this book’s contribution can be seen as a hopeful one. First of all, it explores what the findings do not represent: a form of optimism or false hope. Then, drawing inspiration from the pedagogical literature on critical hope, it summarizes why it is that these findings – and girls – matter in global politics, and some ways in which we can all have hope that we can support girls to make change in their communities and beyond. The chapter summarises why these findings matter to the study of feminist IR, and also to those working with girls and wanting to act as allies to girl activists.
This chapter explores one discourse that the girls in the Global North did initially reproduce uncritically: the portrayal of girlhood in the Global North and South as opposing subject positions. While girls in the Global North did challenge the representation in Girl Up materials of the North as a place of privilege and of gender equality, they reproduced patronising discourses about Southern girlhood as characterized by victimhood, poverty and disease. The girls did not have contextual information available to them to critically reflect on the portrayal of the South, which resonates deeply with historical representations in international development campaigns. However, tracing a progression throughout the research project, the findings reveal that through learning about their peers in other locations, meeting one another in person or via Skype and even setting up a long-term partnership between two clubs, the Northern girls began to negotiate the discourse of oppositional girlhoods too. Where they had initially seen connecting across the discursive North-South divide as impossible, the girls came to interact with one another in an atmosphere of mutual learning and respect.
This chapter explores theoretical debates around the possibility for feminist activism within and against neoliberalism. There is a particular focus on debates surrounding ‘NGOization’, corporate genderwashing and celebrity feminism, before considering how Girl Up, and the girl powering of development more broadly, bring all of these strands of scholarship together. In each case, the chapter considers why it is these particular phenomena are seen as a neoliberalizing of feminism, but also what about them might escape such a definition. How have they been defined as a form of neoliberal feminism? What, in critiques of this phenomenon, is the implicit ‘pure’ form of feminism that it is set apart from? Can feminists and feminist organizations truly afford to disengage from them? Finally, the chapter considers some of the research evidencing women’s resistance to neoliberalism, arguing that there is also a need to theorize how girls, marginalized as they are, find space for activism within and against neoliberal power structures.
This chapter conceptualizes children’s, and especially girls’, agency in global politics. It explores the IR scholarship on childhood to date, arguing that children have typically been seen as victims or perpetrators in global politics, but rarely agents with the ability to make positive change. The chapter then discusses research in the relatively recent field of girlhood studies, which seeks to expand our understanding of girls’ agency by exploring the lived realities of girls across a range of contexts, facing different and intersecting marginalizations. Moving beyond simplistic binaries of ‘agency’ and ‘resistance’, this body of work shows how girls challenge inequalities in their everyday lives. Finally, the chapter discusses a ‘transnational girlhood’ approach to the study of girls’ lives across Global North/South divides and how this might be useful to the study of feminist IR.
This chapter identifies the “Girl Up discourse” by analysing materials available on the Girl Up website and sent out in Girl Up fundraising emails. The analysis demonstrates that the Girl Up discourse reproduces individualistic and instrumentalist discourses about girls in the Global South, placing the responsibility on their shoulders for solving global poverty. Furthermore, it reproduces spectacular discourses of girlhood in the Global North by constructing Northern girls as capable of saving the world. In both cases, it gives girls the responsibility for solving problems that should not be theirs to solve. Furthermore, the discursive constructions of Northern and Southern girlhood divide the world into countries where girls supposedly have every opportunity available to them and countries where girls passively await rescue. However, the chapter then goes on to consider what about the Girl Up campaign might be read ‘against the grain’. When staff at Girl Up make space on the campaign’s website for girls’ own opinions, the Girl Up discourse comes to incorporate more radical and intersectional feminist content than it usually would. Even within official Girl Up materials, then, girls’ own perspectives disrupt dominant development discourses.
This chapter explores the many forms of activism in which Girl Up club members in the UK, the US and Malawi were involved, some of them overtly political. This included social media activism, supporting and mentoring their peers, consciousness raising, challenging domineering men and boys, speaking up in classrooms and questioning or refusing to obey unfair rules. All of the girls participating in the research were engaged in activities of this kind, even though they were aware that this frequently went beyond the official purpose of a Girl Up club. While the Girl Up discourse mostly focused at that time on the supposed power of charitable donations to bring about gender equality in the Global South, very few of the Girl Up members conducted fundraising for the campaign. Instead, they gave talks on feminism to their fellow students, supported and mentored other girls, resisted hostility towards Girl Up and engaged in social movement activism both online and at demonstrations.
This book explores how girls negotiate girl power discourses in international development, taking a campaign focused on fundraising for girls’ education and adapting it to match their own activist goals within their communities. The book traces the evolution of the UN Foundation’s Girl Up campaign in its first decade from 2010 to 2020, showing how it has developed from a focus on fundraising for girls’ education in the Global South to supporting girls’ activism globally. Using focus groups with Girl Up members in the UK, the US and Malawi, the book shows how they negotiate participating in the campaign, and the stigma they often face as a result, with creativity, humour and pragmatism. They gave talks on feminism to their fellow students, supported and mentored other girls, resisted hostility towards Girl Up and engaged in the wider feminist movement, despite the many barriers to their activism that adults placed in their way. Unlike spectacular media and nongovernmental organization (NGO) narratives of girls saving the world all by themselves, these girl activists frequently struggled to be heard and respected. They continued their activism regardless, and the book concludes with suggestions for some of the many ways in which adults, schools, NGOs and allies might better support them to make the world a fairer place for girls.
This chapter draws on feminist audience reception studies to argue the Girl Up club members have a ‘negotiated’ reading of the campaign, in which they embrace and reproduce much of the Girl Up discourse, but also adapt it to fit their own pre-existing understandings and goals for their activism. Through analysing the girls’ readings of Girl Up promotional materials during the focus groups, the chapter shows how they at times embraced girl power discourses and at other times openly rejected their representation of what it means to be a girl. They never reproduced the Girl Up discourse uncritically, nor did they ever adopt a globally contrary stance towards it; rather, they negotiated Girl Up materials with intelligence, sensitivity and wit, at times even directly criticizing formatting choices. They showed a sensitivity not only to what was being said, but also how and to whom.
This chapter introduces the United Nations (UN) Foundation’s Girl Up campaign and the wider phenomenon of the ‘girl powering of international development’. It traces developments over the past few decades that have seen governments, international institutions, transnational corporations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the media converge on the idea that girls in the Global South are the untapped solution to global poverty. It discusses the feminist critiques of girl power discourses in development so far, and situates them within wider critiques of the ‘efficiency’, ‘win-win’, instrumentalist or ‘business’ approach to gender and development. The chapter also introduces the political context in each of the three fieldwork countries at the time of the research: the UK, the US and Malawi. Finally, it introduces the methods used in the research, including discourse analysis and focus groups with girl activists themselves.
This chapter explores UK and US girls’ negotiation of spectacular discourses that see individual girls in the Global North as capable of changing the world entirely on their own, regardless of socioeconomic circumstances and without the support of their wider communities. Although some of the girls in the US and the UK did emphasize that their participation in Girl Up was driven by a feeling that they had a particular talent that they could use to make a difference, this was not articulated in a way that suggested they could improve the situation for girls around the world by themselves. Furthermore, many of the girls were self-deprecating, emphasizing the limitations of what their Girl Up clubs could achieve. They were also eager to discuss the many barriers that they faced in their activism because of their marginalized position in society and within school hierarchies and to highlight where supportive adults were helping to make their activism possible.
