{"title":"Plan International's Digital Empowerment Campaign","authors":"Jacqueline Potvin, Laura Cayen","doi":"10.3167/ghs.2023.160206","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we examine how postfeminist Girl Effect discourse is deployed and extended in Plan International's Digital Empowerment for Girls campaign. Based on critical discourse analysis of campaign texts, we outline how the campaign situates digital empowerment as a way of building girls’ capacity to overcome barriers of poverty and gender equality by allowing them to pursue careers, manage their health, and advocate for governmental change. Drawing on the theory of healthism, we argue that the campaign's discourses of economic empowerment are intertwined with, and scaffolded upon, girls’ perceived ability to manage their reproduction. We problematize how these constructions responsibilize girls for solving social and economic problems, even as the campaign acknowledges ongoing systems of oppression.","PeriodicalId":44250,"journal":{"name":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Girlhood Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2023.160206","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"SOCIAL SCIENCES, INTERDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In this article, we examine how postfeminist Girl Effect discourse is deployed and extended in Plan International's Digital Empowerment for Girls campaign. Based on critical discourse analysis of campaign texts, we outline how the campaign situates digital empowerment as a way of building girls’ capacity to overcome barriers of poverty and gender equality by allowing them to pursue careers, manage their health, and advocate for governmental change. Drawing on the theory of healthism, we argue that the campaign's discourses of economic empowerment are intertwined with, and scaffolded upon, girls’ perceived ability to manage their reproduction. We problematize how these constructions responsibilize girls for solving social and economic problems, even as the campaign acknowledges ongoing systems of oppression.
期刊介绍:
Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the critical discussion of girlhood from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and for the dissemination of current research and reflections on girls'' lives to a broad, cross-disciplinary audience of scholars, researchers, practitioners in the fields of education, social service and health care and policy makers. International and interdisciplinary in scope, it is committed to feminist, anti-discrimination, anti-oppression approaches and solicits manuscripts from a variety of disciplines. The mission of the journal is to bring together contributions from and initiate dialogue among perspectives ranging from medical and legal practice, ethnographic inquiry, philosophical reflection, historical investigations, literary, cultural and media research to curriculum design and policy-making. Topics addressed within the journal include girls and schooling, girls and feminism, girls and sexuality, girlhood in the context of Boyhood Studies, girls and new media and popular culture, representation of girls in different media, histories of girlhood, girls and development.