IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/66231.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Galvanising girls for development? Critiquing the shift from ‘smart’ to ‘smarter economics’

Author

Listed:
  • Chant, Sylvia

Abstract

This article traces the mounting interest in, and visibility of, girls and young women in development (WID) policy, especially since the turn of the twenty-first century when a ‘Smart Economics’ rationale for promoting gender equality and female empowerment has become ever more prominent and explicit. ‘Smart Economics’, which is strongly associated with an increased influence of corporate stakeholders, frequently through public–private partnerships (PPPs), stresses a ‘business case’ for investing in women for developmental (read economic) efficiency, with investment in younger generations of women being touted as more efficient still. The latter is encapsulated in the term ‘Smarter Economics’ with the Nike Foundation’s ‘Girl Effect’ being a showcase example. In this, and similar, initiatives linked with neoliberal development, ‘investing in girls’ appears to be driven not only by imperatives of ‘female empowerment’, but also to realize more general dividends for future economic growth and poverty alleviation. Yet, while it may well be that girls and young women have benefited from their rapid relocation from the sidelines towards the centre of development discourse and planning, major questions remain as to whose voices are prioritized, and whose agendas are primarily served by the current shift from ‘Smart’ to ‘Smarter Economics’.

Suggested Citation

  • Chant, Sylvia, 2016. "Galvanising girls for development? Critiquing the shift from ‘smart’ to ‘smarter economics’," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 66231, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:66231
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66231/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cynthia M. Caron & Shelby A. Margolin, 2015. "Rescuing Girls, Investing in Girls: A Critique of Development Fantasies," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(7), pages 881-897, October.
    2. World Bank, 2011. "World Development Report 2011 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2011 : Conflits, sécurité et développement - Abrégé]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4389.
    3. Anouka Eerdewijk & Tine Davids & Jane L. Parpart, 2014. "Exploring The Transformative Potential Of Gender Mainstreaming In International Development Institutions," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 382-395, April.
    4. Sylvia Chant, 2008. "The 'Feminisation of Poverty' and the 'Feminisation' of Anti-Poverty Programmes: Room for Revision?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(2), pages 165-197.
    5. Adrienne Roberts & Susanne Soederberg, 2012. "Gender Equality as ? A critique of the 2012," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(5), pages 949-968.
    6. Andrea Cornwall & Jenny Edwards, 2010. "Introduction: Negotiating Empowerment," IDS Bulletin, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(2), pages 1-9, March.
    7. World Bank, 2012. "World Development Report 2012 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2012]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4391.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sylvia Chant, 2016. "Galvanizing girls for development? Critiquing the shift from ‘smart’ to ‘smarter economics’," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 16(4), pages 314-328, October.
    2. Sarah Lyon & Tad Mutersbaugh & Holly Worthen, 2017. "The triple burden: the impact of time poverty on women’s participation in coffee producer organizational governance in Mexico," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(2), pages 317-331, June.
    3. Christina Hughes, 2019. "Reexamining the Influence of Conditional Cash Transfers on Migration From a Gendered Lens," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(5), pages 1573-1605, October.
    4. Brenda Wyss, 2015. "Seats for the 51 %: Beyond the Business Case for Corporate Board Quotas in Jamaica," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 211-246, September.
    5. Helen M. Haugh & Alka Talwar, 2016. "Linking Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change: The Mediating Role of Empowerment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 133(4), pages 643-658, February.
    6. Felix Meier Zu Selhausen & Jacob Weisdorf, 2016. "A colonial legacy of African gender inequality? Evidence from Christian Kampala, 1895–2011," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(1), pages 229-257, February.
    7. Stephanie Barrientos & Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie, 2016. "Promoting Gender equality in the cocoa-chocolate value chain: opportunities and challenges in Ghana," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 062016, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    8. Kilic, Talip & Palacios-López, Amparo & Goldstein, Markus, 2015. "Caught in a Productivity Trap: A Distributional Perspective on Gender Differences in Malawian Agriculture," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 416-463.
    9. Alkire, Sabina & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & Peterman, Amber & Quisumbing, Agnes & Seymour, Greg & Vaz, Ana, 2013. "The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 71-91.
    10. Isis Gaddis & Stephan Klasen, 2014. "Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation:," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 639-681, July.
    11. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2022. "Capital Raising and Management of Vietnamese Small and Medium Sized Enterprises after Integrating into Global Economy," OSF Preprints dv68m, Center for Open Science.
    12. Thilsted, Shakuntala Haraksingh & Thorne-Lyman, Andrew & Webb, Patrick & Bogard, Jessica Rose & Subasinghe, Rohana & Phillips, Michael John & Allison, Edward Hugh, 2016. "Sustaining healthy diets: The role of capture fisheries and aquaculture for improving nutrition in the post-2015 era," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 126-131.
    13. Asiedu, Elizabeth & Azomahou, Théophile T. & Getachew, Yoseph & Yitbarek, Eleni, 2021. "Share the love: Parental bias, women empowerment and intergenerational mobility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 846-867.
    14. Karthik Muralidharan & Nishith Prakash, 2017. "Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 321-350, July.
    15. Ghani,Syed Ejaz & Grover,Arti & Kerr,Sari & Kerr,William Robert, 2016. "Will market competition trump gender discrimination in India ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7814, The World Bank.
    16. Michael Chasukwa & Dan Banik, 2019. "Institutional bypass and aid effectiveness in Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-22, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Elisabetta Lodigiani & Sara Salomone, 2015. "Migration-induced Transfers of Norms. Political Empowerment?The case of Female Political Empowerment," Working Papers 2015:19, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    18. Alberto Bagnai & Arsène Rieber & Thi Anh-Dao Tran, 2015. "Economic growth and balance-of-payments constraint in Vietnam," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(4), pages 588-615, November.
    19. Anne Jerneck, 2018. "What about Gender in Climate Change? Twelve Feminist Lessons from Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-20, February.
    20. Emma Galli & Danilo V. Mascia & Stefania P. S. Rossi, 2020. "Bank credit constraints for women‐led SMEs: Self‐restraint or lender bias?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 26(4), pages 1147-1188, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Smart economics; girls in development policy; gender inequality; girl effect; corporate stakeholders; neoliberal development;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:66231. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.