Girl Power

Girl power can be defined as a dynamic, contradictory, and contested version of contemporary girlhood generally characterized by educational achievement, delayed childbearing, career advancement, consumer market participation, and social success via hypervisible, apolitical participation in cultural and lifestyle economies. The concept is relevant to childhood studies because normative conceptions of girl power shape global cultural expectations for young, female-identified, feminine bodies despite the enduring power of intersecting structural exclusions (e.g., racism, cisheterosexism, ableism, classism, imperialism, militarism) to constrain the conditions of possibility for most subjects. This entry discusses girl power as a cultural phenomenon in the Global North, describes how Western notions of girl power circulate to the Global South, and reflects on the use of post-girl power to signal cultural changes in the 30 ...