Guest Editorial: LA SITUATION DES FILLES DANS LE MONDE: ENJEUX HOMMES-FEMMES ET ÉDUCATION EN TANT QUE PROGRAMME D'ACTION / GLOBAL GIRLS: GENDER AND EDUCATION AS A PLATFORM FOR ACTION

Authors

  • Claudia Mitchell McGill University
  • Marilyn Blaeser Canadian International Development Agency

Abstract

When we issued the Call for Papers on the theme of Global Girls we were seeking articles on a variety of concerns related to the lives of girls, particularly in the context of development - ranging from those which would address directly the experiences and material conditions of girls' lives in relation to schooling, to those which might have something to do with the unique features of researching girls' lives. Our call is not one that should be regarded as a lone voice in the wilderness, for it follows closely on what might be described as a spate of publications on girlhood ranging from Sherrie Innes's volume Millennium Girls: Today's Girls Around the World, to Ruth Saxton's The Girl: Constructions of the Girl in Contemporary Fiction by Women, to Sharon Mazzarella and Norman Odom Pecora's Growing Up Girls: Popular culture and the construction of identity. These authors weave into the introductory essays of their edited books dozens of titles of books that have been published in the last 10 years that take up psychological, sociological and literary approaches to the study of girls' lives. They refer to the extensive body of work by Carol Gilligan and her contemporaries at Harvard University, and the work of Valerie Walkerdine in the UK, but they also include accounts from an emerging scholarship on girls' lives within minority cultures in North America and elsewhere. While these review volumes do not focus extensively on "the girl-child" as she has come to be called in the development literature, or include the work that Nellie Stromquist and others are doing in relation to the girl-child, clearly issues of social and economic development, girls' access to schooling, and so on - all central to the debates within international development - are not that far away from girls' lives more globally. RÉSUMÉ Lorsque nous avons lancé un appel de communications sur le thème de la situation des filles dans le monde, nous sollicitions des articles sur une foule de questions liées à la condition des filles, et particulièrement à leur développement, et traitant aussi bien des expériences et de la situation matérielle des filles dans le processus d'éducation que des particularités de la recherche portant sur la condition des filles. Nous ne sommes pas les seules à nous intéresser à ces questions, car notre appel s'inscrivait dans la foulée d'une multitude de publications consacrées aux filles parmi lesquelles figurent Millennium Girls: Today's Girls Around the World de Sherrie Innes, The Girl: Constructions of the Girl in Contemporary Fiction by Women, de Ruth Saxton, Growing up girls: Popular culture and the construction of identity de Sharon Mazzarella et Norman Odom Pecora. Ces auteurs citent, dans l'introduction des ouvrages dont elles ont assuré la publication, des dizaines de titres de livres publiés au cours des 10 dernières années et consacrés aux approches psychologiques, sociologiques et littéraires de l'étude de la condition des filles. Elles font allusion à la masse de travaux de Carol Gilligan et de ses contemporains de l'Université Harvard, ainsi qu'aux travaux que Valerie Walkerdine a menés au Royaume-Uni, mais elles tiennent également compte de nouvelles études portant sur la condition des filles dans les cultures minoritaires de l'Amérique du Nord et d'ailleurs. Bien que ces ouvrages ne portent pas principalement sur la fille («girl-child» en anglais), terme désormais utilisé dans les publications consacrées au développement, et ne tiennent pas compte des travaux que Nellie Stromquist et d'autres chercheurs lui consacrent, il est clair que les questions de développement social et économique, de l'accès des filles à l'éducation et le reste - qui sont toutes au coeur du débat portant sur le développement international - présentent des liens avec la situation générale des filles.

Author Biographies

Claudia Mitchell, McGill University

CLAUDIA MITCHELL teaches in the Faculty of Education of McGill University. She is the Director of the Canada South Africa Education Management Program (CSAEMP), a partnership of CIDA, the National Department of Education of South Africa and McGill University.

Marilyn Blaeser, Canadian International Development Agency

MARILYN BLAESER is a Senior Education policy Adviser with CIDA and a Professional Associate of McGill University. Her most recent fieldwork was with UNICEF, Zambia where she initiated the Programme for the Advancement of Girls (PAGE).

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Published

2000-09-01

How to Cite

Mitchell, C., & Blaeser, M. (2000). Guest Editorial: LA SITUATION DES FILLES DANS LE MONDE: ENJEUX HOMMES-FEMMES ET ÉDUCATION EN TANT QUE PROGRAMME D’ACTION / GLOBAL GIRLS: GENDER AND EDUCATION AS A PLATFORM FOR ACTION . McGill Journal of Education / Revue Des Sciences De l’éducation De McGill, 35(003). Retrieved from https://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/8537

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Editorial