Empowered Girls: The Effect of Heterogeneous Discourses

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Occupation and Empowerment: Lessons From Difference and Conflict

Abstract

International educational organizations have taken up the symbol of Malala, a Pakistani girl who was shot by a member of an Islamist group in 2012, to seek an expansion of formal education for girls in Pakistan. This paper argues that images of empowered girls like Malala do not exist in isolation but are put together contingently out of heterogeneous discourses, ideas and knowledges. I propose that Malala sits at the nexus of at least three distinct discourses: discourse on Muslim women; discourse on neoliberal governmentality; and discourse on adolescent sexuality. By investigating the discursive structure within which Malala, in particular, and empowered girls, in general, are situated, this paper seeks to take away the coherence with which they are presented.

Author

• Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Teachers College, Columbia University