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Informed powerlessness: child marriage interventions and Third World girlhood discourses

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  • Thais Bessa

Abstract

Child marriage has gained increased international prominence over the past decades. Organisations working with the issue have promoted empowering girls as the best strategy to address it. Informed by postcolonial feminist theory, this article will locate these discourses in broader ‘turn to the girl’ and ‘turn to agency’ in international development, analysing how Third World girlhood, agency, resistance and voice are conceptualised. Girls are constructed as threatened by their families and communities, with agency exercised through resistance and materialised by their voice. I argue that this ignores the complexity of decision-making processes and broader structural factors related to child marriage, so that interventions providing ‘empowerment-as-information’ for girls to be agents of change instead leave them in a state of informed powerlessness.

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  • Thais Bessa, 2019. "Informed powerlessness: child marriage interventions and Third World girlhood discourses," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(11), pages 1941-1956, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:40:y:2019:i:11:p:1941-1956
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2019.1626229
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    Cited by:

    1. Lars Engberg‐Pedersen, 2021. "Is the influence of neoliberalism on development norms waning? Evidence from the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 39(4), pages 682-700, July.

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