‘I Matter and so Does She’: Girl Power, (Post)feminism and the Girl Effect

Abstract

This chapter looks critically at the ‘Girl Effect’, a new trend in global development policy and practice that involves a focus on and address to young women. The idea of the Girl Effect was coined by the corporate giant Nike in the mid-noughties, and had at its heart a bold claim: that girls hold the key to ending world poverty and transforming health and life expectancy in the developing world. It was proposed that a radical new approach was needed to problems of poverty and ill health that seemed intractable, foregrounding the simple injunction to ‘invest in a girl and she’ll do the rest’.