Welcome to Girl Museum’s interview series, Why We Need Girls’ Studies, for 2024. We have many exciting interviews this year with important scholars in the field to get insights about what we are all doing in this space to further our understanding of girlhood and girls’ experiences.
This month’s interview is with Emily Bent, an associate professor in Gender and Women’s Studies at Pace University. Emily explores global girlhood discourses, feminist girlhoods, and girls’ political participation and activist politics. Her current book project titled “Feminist Girls: The New Politics of Gender and Age at the United Nations” examines the lives of teenage girl activists at the United Nations from 2010-2015.
Why do you consider it important to study girlhood?
I have always been fascinated by girlhood, both in the ways girlhood is constructed, imagined, (re)produced, and performed across different times, places, and spaces, and in the ways, girlhood gives meaning to all of us regardless of how we identify. After completing my undergraduate and graduate studies in women and gender studies in 2004, I entered the nonprofit sector with an interest in working with girls and young women. One of my first assignments was to facilitate so-called “empowerment workshops” for girls through pre-scripted, consciousness raising activities scaffolded by the girls-in-crisis and girl-power narratives of the 1990s and early 2000s. Girlhood studies scholars have since forwarded important considerations for how programmatic intervention under the guise of “empowering girls” emboldens neoliberal ethos of individual choice and agency in the new global economy often to the detriment of authentic girl power and to girls themselves. Throughout my girl-focused facilitation work, I heard different groups of girls repeatedly express the desire to be treated and seen as equal partners and peers across social justice movements and changemaking agendas.
For me, it is, here, at this intersection of the research meeting girls themselves that I find most compelling about the study of girlhood. Girlhood studies work asks each of us, girls and adults, to be attentive and accountable to one another; this principle in practice means our scholarship not only includes girls as subjects of import but that the work we produce on, about, for, and with girls resonates and gives value to the complexities, challenges, and joys of girlhoods today.
Like other girlhood studies scholars, I find myself drawn to what Mary Celeste Kearney articulated more than fifteen years ago about the underlying purpose of studying girlhood, which is to say that we labor together to “make the world a more respectful place for female youth” (2009: 22). When I think about why girlhood studies matter to me, I recall those early experiences of working with different groups of girls on empowerment projects and remain drawn to girls’ call for a more radical visibility in the intergenerational partnership work we shared. The study of girlhood fosters new and exciting opportunities for me to learn more about how girls’ experience and navigate the political as well as how they create alternative political spaces to claim voice while realizing their rights and visions of justice.
Girlhood studies is a relatively new field, yet is rapidly changing. What are the biggest opportunities for those interested in studying girlhood?
Girlhood studies is boundless when it comes to how one might approach the intellectual and practice scope of the field. Studies of girls and girlhoods is also inter- and multi-disciplinary which allows scholars, practitioners, and adult-allies to work in concert with and for girls across just about every sector of the world today. Girls at the same time continue to push the disciplinary boundaries of the field itself and in what is commonly understood or known about girlhood; and as more girls help to shape, theorize, author, and produce new knowledge about their lives and experiences, and of the histories of girlhood throughout the world, the greater the opportunity to generate impactful scholarship. With increasing interest in girlhood, we see a rise in demand for girls’ studies courses and coursework at the undergraduate and graduate level as well as in expressed priorities across the not-for-profit sector and in government, civil society, and international efforts. All of this to say that whether you are interested in studying girls or girlhoods, supporting girl-led activism, increasing access to local resources for different groups of girls, building stronger intergenerational partnerships, exploring a forgotten history about girls’ lives, engaging with community-based efforts to address various inequities and violences experienced by girls, or any other topic or area that intersects with girls and girlhood, there is space to do that work.
What is the biggest challenge facing girlhood studies? Do you have ideas on how we can address it?
I have been thinking a lot recently about how to meet this political moment and to continue to show up for girls and for one another with authenticity. Shortly after the U.S. re-election of President Donald Trump, The New York Times published an opinion piece written by a 16-year-old high school junior named Naomi Beinart. In this piece, she writes about feeling suddenly distanced from the boys in her school who could not relate to girls’ expressions of personal and political despair after the election. She states, “I have never felt that disconnected from men. I have never felt more like a girl… in a terrible way, I’ve never felt more part of a sisterhood” (Beinart 2024). Beinart’s description of having “the wind knocked out” of her as she joined a sisterhood created out of pain, anger, defeat, and fear haunts me; it reflects a heartbreaking ever-present reality for many of us – and one that I do not think we have prepared girls to face with us.
It makes me think about how much better we need to be about truly engaging with girls as equitable peers. As feminist scholars, activists, practitioners, and allies, this includes being honest with girls about our shared sense of sorrow, frustration, shock, and horror. It means thinking and acting with intergenerational and intersectional purpose, standing with girls in support of their leadership and activism, and working together in the face of dangerous national and global policies and politics which oppose all measures of equality and justice for marginalized communities and peoples.
The challenge facing girlhood studies moreover includes maintaining the significance and value of the work – whether in studying historical forms of girlhood or documenting girl-led resistance practices. As Ruth Nicole Brown reminds us in her writing about the creative potential of Black girlhood, girls “desire a space to be more than the expectations that others have for them” (2013: 2). To affirm and create space for girlhood in all its’ diverse forms and complexities is to mark girls’ lives not only as meaningful but essential to the human experience. Girlhood studies, in this moment of proscribed racial and gendered erasure, must continue to share stories about girls and girlhoods, to forward expansive and inclusive ways of “being a girl”, to deepen our commitment to intergenerational feminist partnership, and to prioritize work by, with, and for girls.
Finally, please feel free to plug any current projects or publications that you want to highlight.
My research interests include girl-led activist movements, girls’ human rights, and intergenerational feminist partnerships in transnational contexts. For almost twenty-years, I have been working side-by-side with girl leaders at the United Nations. Most recently, I along with Crystal Leigh Endsley, Marnina Gonick, and Adwoa Aidoo distributed a call for papers in the Girlhood Studies Journal under the theme “A Seat at the Table: Recalling the Promises of Girl Activism and Advocacy.” This Special Issue will bring together girl activists, young women, practitioners, artists, community organizers, and academic feminist partners involved with girl-led movements to share experiences and lessons learned. Readers can learn more about that project here.
In collaboration with Heather Switzer and Karishma Desai, I co-edited Girls in Global Development which is a collection of essays that consider how the concept of “girls in development” represents a distinctive way of envisioning girls and girlhoods in locations around the globe and at various points in history through a critical feminist lens.
Lastly, I am working on a book that traces the girls’ rights movement inside the United Nations; this project draws from my experiences working with girl leaders and non-governmental organizations at the International Day of the Girl and Commission on the Status of Women, chronicling thirty-years of girls’ rights activism at the United Nations.
References
Beinart, Naomi. “I’m 16. On Nov. 6 the Girls Cried, and the Boys Played Minecraft.” The New York Times Opinion, November 16, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/opinion/donald-trump-women-girls.html
Brown, Ruth Nicole. Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013.
Kearney, Mary Celeste. “Coalescing: The Development of Girls’ Studies.” NWSA Journal 21, 1 (Spring 2009): 1 – 28.