{"id":7346,"date":"2014-06-04T08:01:50","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T13:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=7346"},"modified":"2014-06-04T08:01:50","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T13:01:50","slug":"reflections-on-bringbackourgirls-and-the-missing-discourse-of-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2014\/06\/04\/reflections-on-bringbackourgirls-and-the-missing-discourse-of-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on #BringBackOurGirls and the Missing Discourse of Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

This\u00a0month, guest contributor Emily Bent<\/strong>\u00a0looks at\u00a0what’s\u00a0missing in girl power discourse. Emily Bent is\u00a0Assistant Professor in Women\u2019s and Gender Studies at Pace University in New York City\u00a0and\u00a0the Co-Chair of the Working Group on Girls (WGG) at the United Nations, a coalition of over 80 nation and international non-governmental organizations dedicated to advancing the rights of girls around the world. Her work has been published in the\u00a0<\/em><\/em>Global Studies of Childhood Journal\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em><\/em>Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, where her article, “A Different Girl Effect: Producing Political Girlhoods in the \u2018Invest in Girls\u2019 Climate” was recently named Outstanding Author Contribution in the 2014 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

\"BBOG_GR_Avatar\"<\/a>It\u2019s been six weeks since the mid-April abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls<\/a> in Northeastern Nigeria. Despite international attention, public outcries, rallies, petitions, social media campaigns, Google chats<\/a>, and coordinated military efforts, the girls are still missing\u2014and the world (or at least the mainstream media) appears to have lost interest.<\/p>\n

According to Hayes Brown<\/a> at ThinkProgress.org, Google analytics tell us that while the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls reached peak interest around Friday May 9th<\/sup>, it all but dropped off the radar by the following Monday. As of early June 2014, it appears that we might not be any closer to finding these girls than at the start of the #BringBackOurGirls initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, where do we go from here? What can we learn from the successes and failures of this political project? And perhaps most importantly, how do we ensure the continued educational safety and opportunity for all of our girls?<\/p>\n

We should begin by re-thinking the discursive (im)possibilities of #BringBackOurGirls and the call more broadly to \u201cinvest in girls.\u201d Too often, this neoliberal, postfeminist, and girl power discourse gets deployed as the only <\/em>feasible solution to gender-based inequalities in schools. But if we\u2019re serious about the importance of girls\u2019 education across the globe, then we need to start reframing the following discursive threads:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Let\u2019s start talking about girls\u2019 rights and not just neoliberal girl power.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If we look at popular slogans and arguments for the importance of girls\u2019 education, it is rather striking that the discourse of rights is almost entirely absent. From The Girl Effect\u2019s \u201cinvest in a girl and she will do the rest\u201d to Girl Rising\u2019s \u201cone girl with courage is a revolution,\u201d we can see similar messages about the capacity of individual girls to overcome all the odds. Moreover, we understand that the possibilities of her transformation stems from her ability to become \u201cresponsible for [her] own regulation,\u201d as Valerie Walkerdine puts it<\/a>. This neoliberal girl power framework removes the role of the family, community, and government. Instead, as I\u2019ve argued elsewhere<\/a>, it \u201cencourages girls to take personal responsibility for their successes and failures\u201d inside and outside of the classroom.<\/p>\n

    Because of the limitations of neoliberal girl power, I suggest that we begin using the discourse of human rights to advocate for girls\u2019 education and girls\u2019 human rights more specifically. We have an arsenal of human rights platforms at our disposal. Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees the right to primary education and access to secondary education, while Article 2 protects children from violence and discrimination based on sex, race, language, ethnicity, birth status and so forth. The Beijing Platform for Action, Section L addresses the unique needs of the girl child in the areas of education, health, labor, cultural practices, gender-based violence, political life, and the media among others. CEDAW<\/a> similarly calls for women and girls\u2019 \u201chuman rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, [and] civil\u201d life.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s time to start leveraging the weight of human rights platforms in the movement for girls\u2019 education. We need to stop telling individual girls to \u201cstart a revolution\u201d and \u201cdo the rest\u201d and instead, work more collectively to demand that girls\u2019 human rights be respected. Nigeria has signed onto the CRC, CEDAW and Beijing Platform for Action. Why not start holding governments accountable for what they pledge to do for girls in their country? We can\u2019t do this with the slogan of neoliberal girl power.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Girls are more than investment opportunities or economic assets waiting to be \u201charnessed.\u201d<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      One of the most troubling aspects of the \u201cinvest in girls\u201d narrative is how this discursive move positions girls as objects and economic assets but never subjects in their own right. The justification for educating girls tends to follow a similar pattern; we document all of the good things that happen to a country\u2019s economy and the global marketplace when a girl is educated, but we never speak about the girl as an actual person.<\/p>\n

      For example, Nicholas Kristof notes in The New York Times<\/em><\/a> that girls\u2019 education \u201ccan, in effect, almost double the formal labor force. It boosts the economy, raising living standards and promoting a virtuous cycle of development.\u201d Investing in girls gives us the opportunity to \u201charness\u201d and \u201cunleash\u201d the potential of girls\u2019 economic productivity. Indeed, Tara Abraham of Girl Rising states<\/a>, \u201cthe benefits have been well researched\u2026 and that is the potential we want to harness and unleash on countries like Nigeria.\u201d<\/p>\n

      I am deeply uncomfortable with the language of investment returns, of harnessing and unleashing. It makes girls out to be something less than human. It denies girls of their subjectivity and human rights and, as Heather Switzer argues<\/a>, it \u201cempt[ies] girl subjects of agency.\u201d I understand the purpose of this language is to capture investors and convince the international community that we need to pay attention to girls, but there must be a way to do this without reifying girls\u2019 objectification under the auspices of economic development.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. It\u2019s time to complicate the picture: education is not the<\/em> answer and neither is the girl<\/em>. So, let\u2019s stop saying that it is<\/em> that simple, because it is not.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        In this fast-paced, media-saturated world, I understand the power of a clear, bold message that captures an audience and inspires individuals\u00a0to take action. But, I think we need to rethink the overreliance on simplistic stories of sociocultural and geopolitical change. It doesn\u2019t happen just because one girl went to school or one person donated a backpack; it happens much more haphazardly than we would like to admit.<\/p>\n

        Switzer also notes<\/a> that the neoliberal girl power narrative \u201creinforces a fundamental (post)feminist development dictum that simply providing school will de facto <\/em>empower [girls\u2026 even when we know] that education is not a gender-neutral public good; schools are not always safe spaces for girls\u2026 and female education does not guarantee the fundamental gendered social transformations\u2026 required for her to \u2018call the shots.\u2019\u201d In other words, girls\u2019 empowerment takes more than a school uniform; it requires buy-in from her family, culture and society, government, and the global community. It is time to get comfortable with a more complicated (and often contradictory) picture of social change and empowerment. Because the solution is a lot less clear than we would like it to be.<\/p>\n

        #BringOurGirlsBack represents both the tragedy and opportunities created by injustice. I thus see this as a moment to reflect upon what is still needed to achieve girls\u2019 human rights. What do we, as a global community, need to do to ensure that all girls can attend school safely? And what do we need to do to hold perpetrators of violence against girls accountable for their actions, whether in Northeastern Nigeria or Santa Barbara, California?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        This\u00a0month, guest contributor Emily Bent\u00a0looks at\u00a0what’s\u00a0missing in girl power discourse. Emily Bent is\u00a0Assistant Professor in Women\u2019s and Gender Studies at Pace University in New York City\u00a0and\u00a0the Co-Chair of the Working Group on Girls (WGG) at the United Nations, a coalition of over 80 nation and international non-governmental organizations dedicated to advancing the rights of girls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1916,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,21961],"tags":[27699,27700],"class_list":["post-7346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-women-across-borders","tag-bringbackourgirls","tag-emily-bent"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7346"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7364,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7346\/revisions\/7364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}