Beyond ‘rescue’ or ‘responsibilisation’ within girls’ empowerment programmes: Notes on recovering agency from the Global South

Abstract

Girls’ empowerment programmes have been celebrated as the ‘Smarter Economics’ of pulling girls and families out of poverty; and critiqued as neoliberal strategies for ‘delivering gendered equality through responsibilised selves. These oppositional accounts, conceptualised within institutions of the Global North, present girls as ‘victims’ in different ways, adopting narrow, liberal conceptions of agency and empowerment. Analysing a girls’ empowerment programme from south India, we argue that agency is a relational quality embedded within social relationships. Based on this understanding, we present the ethical need and possibilities for going beyond frameworks that individualise empowerment and position it as ‘rescue’ and ‘responsibilisation.’

Girls' schooling is important but insufficient to promote equality for boys and girls in childhood and across the life course

“…(2022) as framing girls as unwittingly “responsibilised” or as victims in need of “rescue.” They suggest that both approaches are limited by an individualized concept of agency, and that a relational understanding may be more appropriate. They suggest that interventions that seek to empower girls should “restructure relationships and the ways in which power is held within society” (Maithreyi et al., 2022). Such changes in the relations of power hold the key to agency but empowerment interventions do not “preclude the range of possible actions, thus neither straightforwardly leading to ‘rescue’ or ‘responsibilisation’” (Maithreyi et al., 2022).…”

“…They suggest that interventions that seek to empower girls should “restructure relationships and the ways in which power is held within society” (Maithreyi et al., 2022). Such changes in the relations of power hold the key to agency but empowerment interventions do not “preclude the range of possible actions, thus neither straightforwardly leading to ‘rescue’ or ‘responsibilisation’” (Maithreyi et al., 2022). We suggest that our results dovetail with this argument by highlighting how constraints on utilization limit the benefits of improvements in education/ realization .…”

“…The business‐case approach and its feminist critique have been further critiqued by Maithreyi et al. (2022) as framing girls as unwittingly “responsibilised” or as victims in need of “rescue.” They suggest that both approaches are limited by an individualized concept of agency, and that a relational understanding may be more appropriate. They suggest that interventions that seek to empower girls should “restructure relationships and the ways in which power is held within society” (Maithreyi et al., 2022).…”

“…The business-case approach and its feminist critique have been further critiqued by Maithreyi et al (2022) as framing girls as unwittingly "responsibilised" or as victims in need of "rescue." They suggest that both approaches are limited by an individualized concept of agency, and that a relational understanding may be more appropriate.…”

Section Two – Introduction Multiplicity and Fundamental Inequality of Childhoods in South Asia

“…The real growing up in the countries which are under discussion here corresponds to this pattern partly more, partly less and partly not at all. Just from this, paradoxically, the pattern gets its relevancein the measuring of the distance and proximity to it which happens constantlyby the participants themselves, by the policy but also not least by many researchers who regard the deviation depending upon their point of view as deficit or as cultural inherent value and necessity or as both (see, for example, the various chapters in Behera, 2007, andMaithreyi et al, 2022). Whether the pattern is rejected or adopted, it dominates scholarly debates on childhoods in these countries and the childhood programmes of international and national organisations, where they are launched.…”