Girls and Young Women Driving Gender Transformation in Rural Spaces in Global South Contexts

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

At the heart of this panel is the idea of deepening an understanding of the participation of girls and young women as key players in driving gender-transformation. Gender transformation sits as a guiding framework for feminist practices in Global North engagement with the Global South. However, there remains a paucity of evidence about the ‘how’ of gender-transformation and especially the idea of transformative methodologies in relation to social change (Hildebrand et al, 2015; MacArthur et al, 2022). This gap is despite the urgency of disrupting gender norms across so many critical areas of human existence, as reflected in the 2030 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals particularly in relation to issues of critical importance to young people (social identities and sexual and reproductive health, climate justice, queer activism, employment, and mental health, to name only a few). Governments are increasingly investing in Gender Transformation, especially through the growing number of feminist foreign policies including Canada’s 2017 Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) alongside a growing number of countries such as Mexico, Sweden, France, Spain, Luxembourg, Germany, and Chile (Tiessen, 2019; UNWomen, 2022). At the same time, gender transformation sits as a ‘living concept’ in the everyday lives of girls and young women in many rural contexts particularly in the Global South. This panel draws together stories of working with young people as critical thinkers, change makers, innovators, communicators, and leaders in the work of understanding, critiquing, and implementing gender transformation in South Africa, Sierra Leone and Brazil. Organized within a multi-year transnational project partnership grant, ‘TRANSORM: Engaging with young people for social change’ led by researchers in Canada and South Africa and involved over 40 researchers, 16 universities and 10 partner organizations working in East and South Africa, Latin America and India., the papers in this panel ask the question ‘what does gender-transformation look like?” A key feature of TRANSFORM’s transnationalitm, its multi-year funding, its ‘partnership of partnerships’ approach, is the fact that it builds on pre-existing fieldwork as well as new fieldwork with a focus on longitudinality, learning across projects, and what Walsh et al (2022) refer to as learning “over time”.

The panel is made up of 4 papers. Each of the papers is located within an educational context, focuses on different aspects of participatory visual research such as cellphilming, photovoice and drawing in youth-focused community-based research addressing gender-transformation. Across the papers we consider questions such as the following: How does the digital contribute to disrupting gender norms? What counts as visual evidence in this work and for whom? How is gender-transformation represented and who can see it? When is seeing believing in the world of policy dialogue?

The first two papers focus on research with girls and young women to address child, early and forced marriage and unions (CEFMU). Paper One “I know it when I see it: Considering gender transformation in context” takes up this work in South Africa, looking back on the use of drawings/photographs/collages/cellphilms produced by girls and young women, and reflecting on the engagement of the girls and community members in the interpretive process. Paper Two: Visualising the impact of Child, Early and Forced Marriage and Unions on adolescent girls in the North of Brazil highlights the use of photovoice and drawing as tools of engagement in working with girls in schools in Northern Brazil in relation to CEFMU.

Papers Three and Four examine more closely the role of teachers working in participatory ways with girls and young women. Paper Three: Using the ‘Sick Tree’ Analogy for Catalysing Gender Transformation with ‘Champion Teachers in South African Rural Schools describes a project involving what the authors refer to as “champion teachers” in working with girls’ groups or girls’ clubs in South Africa. Paper Four: Mobilizing Knowledge About Gender Transformation: New teachers taking action in Sierra Leone through cellphilming highlights the use of visual documentation in creating a digital dialogue tool for knowledge mobilization in working with young teachers in Sierra Leone using cellphilming. Their cellphilms delve into such critical issues as early marriage and female genital mutilation as central to disrupting gender norms. Occupying the dual positions as teachers and as young people, their role in knowledge mobilization about gender transformation is key.

Taken together the four papers seek to explore the ‘how’ of disrupting gender norms for transformative social change. The use of the visual and digital technology as a feature running across all four papers recognizes the significance of tools for seeing change.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Claudia Mitchell, McGill University

Chair

• Claudia Mitchell, McGill University

Individual Presentations

• Visualising the impact of Child, Early and Forced Marriage and Unions on adolescent girls in the North of Brazil - Boroka Godley, McGill University

• Using the ‘Sick Tree’ Analogy for Catalysing Gender Transformation with ‘Champion Teachers in South African Rural Schools - Relebohile Moletsane, University of Kwazulu-Natal; Lisa Wiebesiek, University of Kwazulu-Natal; Nkonzo Mkhize, Centre for Visual Methodologies for Social Change; Samkelisiwe Luthuli, University of KwaZulu-Natal

• Mobilizing Knowledge About Gender Transfomation: New teachers taking action in Sierra Leone through cellphilming - Claudia Mitchell, McGill University; LISA J STARR, University of Lethbridge; Jennifer A Thompson, McGill University; Grace Skahan