Girl Power?: A History of Girl-Focused Development from Nairobi

An examination of how, when, and why austerity capitalism and strands of feminism became intertwined, and why girl-focused programs have been at the heart of international policymaking.

Girl-focused education programs have long been at the heart of international policymaking--when girls’ access to education is ensured, the reasoning goes, they are more likely to turn into productive adults who can drive economic growth. These ideas combine strands of feminism and capitalism that have a specific and understudied origin. In this book, historian Sarah Bellows-Blakely shows how a doctored study of girls’ education in East and Southern Africa led to the creation of international norms in the United Nations that would go on to guide policymaking on women’s rights and economic growth, promoting neoliberal feminist policy at the expense of other forms of gender-based justice.

Focusing on the growth of free-market feminism and girl-focused economic development planning through the relationship between UNICEF and the Nairobi-based NGO FEMNET, Bellows-Blakely reveals how their joint efforts set the blueprints for linked movements of economic development and women’s rights that are still ongoing. Through a narrative of the UNICEF-FEMNET lobbying campaign, Bellows-Blakely shows how multiple, contested girl-focused visions of economic programming and gender justice became selectively erased in favor of an approach to global policy centered on the free-market construction and strategic deployment of the African ＂girl child.＂

Sarah Bellows-Blakely is a junior research group leader in Gender Studies and Global History at the Freie Universität Berlin.