Thank you, and thank you very much for accommodating my change in schedule. It was very important.
I'm going to read my remarks in order to stay within the 10 minutes.
I would like to congratulate the committee for taking on this very important issue of studying the economic prospects for Canadian girls, and I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear before you today.
I have had the opportunity to read at least some of the evidence that has been presented already. In the interests of time, I will try to not simply repeat what has already been presented. Having said that, I also want to note that what I have read or that particularly has been most impressive are the presentations on aboriginal girls in Canada in relation to poverty.
I appear before you today as an academic researcher working in the area of girlhood studies as an academic discipline. In 2008, I co-founded with two colleagues an international peer review journal called Girlhood Studies, which, as far as I know, is the only academic journal that specifically focuses on girls, and not just as part of the category of children, or youth, or women.
As part of our journal’s mandate of working with girls, for girls, and about girls, we've embarked upon a set of international consultations across a variety of social and economic contexts: Nordic girlhood and the changing contexts for girls as the social welfare state changes; girlhood in Russia and the new market economies; and comparative work between Australia and Canada on girlhood. We will be highlighting this comparative work at McGill, at a McGill-based conference on girlhood, between October 10 and 12, which will coincide with the first International Day of the Girl Child.
I also appear before you as someone who works in what might be described as the global milieu of girlhood, having served three years on Plan International’s “Because I am a Girl” campaign and having conducted numerous studies on girls’ education in South Africa, The Gambia, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Swaziland, and recently having conducted an evaluation for the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative, UNGEI.
What I would like to do now is put forward four broad areas about which I would like to offer some recommendations that come out of my work in these various contexts.
The first recommendation I have for the committee is in the context of the emerging research agenda of the Status of Women and other organizations of Canada, and that is in relation to the critical area of the direct participation of girls and young women in research. The early 1990s may have been the heyday for Canada and support for girls. CIDA offered impressive support for girl child programming, and Canada was well known for several key studies. One was the “A Capella” study on adolescent girls, organized by the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, and the other was the Status of Women conference “We're Here, Listen to Us!”. What was exciting about this work were the groundbreaking innovations in terms of the engagement of real girls and what they had to say.
My own research around the globe suggests that now more than ever we need broad consultations with girls across this country, and we need funding for new scholars coming along to take on this work in participatory ways. I would like to go so far as to suggest that this committee—your committee—consider making recommendations to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to establish as a priority area work on the economic prospects of girls and young women.
As you might know, they already have several priority areas. One is aboriginal research. Another is on the digital economies. Neither of these rules out participatory work with girls and young women, but in the absence of naming girlhood as priority area, it is likely to fall through the cracks. What we have learned in the international arena with UN Women, with UNGEI, and with other organizations is that the issues have to be named as priorities in order to get on and stay on the agenda, so I've put forward this as a first recommendation.
My second recommendation pertains to the situation of studies of girlhood in the context of work with boys and young men. This is a tricky area in the global north, where girls are typically seen to be outperforming boys in many areas of schooling and of employment.
However, as the already presented previous evidence suggests, the situation for aboriginal girls does not fit this analysis. I believe the Girls Action Foundation also highlighted the new studies on school dropouts in Quebec and suggested that the work is far more complex. I would like to recommend to the committee that every effort be made to not pit the situation of girls and the situation of boys against each other when it comes to funding.
There is ample evidence to suggest that boys and men have to be allies in work with girls and women, especially in such areas as gender violence, and that Canada is in a key position to take leadership in the area of moving forward in ways that make gender studies—boys’ perspectives, girls’ perspectives, and gender relations—prominent. We need support for both boys and girls, and we need new scholarship and new policy guidelines in this area. This has been a feminist dilemma for some time. Plan International's Because I am a Girl campaign last year actually focused on the place of boys in addressing the situation of girls. This was groundbreaking work, but it cannot stop there. This doesn’t mean that we stop focusing on girls, but that we need to look to models and designs that are separate but inclusive if we are to understand economic prosperity.
My third recommendation pertains to girls, sexuality, and risk in relation to STIs and especially HIV and AIDS. This is an area that is central to my own research with aboriginal youth, both boys and girls, in the Canadian context. I know we will be hearing more about this from Jessica Danforth. It was very important when we were studying aboriginal youth leadership, particularly in relation to colonization. It is also an important part of my work in South Africa. There the rates of infection are very high, and girls and young women are up to three times more likely than boys and young men to be HIV positive.
This work links to gender violence, low self-esteem in negotiating sex in the first place, and certainly the ability to negotiate the use of condoms. I know there are many initiatives in Canada that look at girls and leadership, but I would like to recommend that we need more focus on looking at sexuality and how it links to economic prosperity, and how it links to leadership in a more direct way.
Finally I want to say something about addressing the enormous challenges of drawing together the research and programming related to girls in Canada and internationally. What is probably obvious through this consultation is that there is a great deal of work going on in the area of girlhood, but it is very hit and miss in terms of being coordinated or available through some type of clearing house. Part of that circumstance is related to the vast range of issues, and the fact that the study of girls’ lives cuts across so many different sectors that do not speak to each other—health, technology, education, social services, labour, aboriginal studies, immigrant studies, and so on. I would like to us to consider that if there is one country that could take leadership in an information age in this area of coordinating work related to girlhood, it is Canada.
What would a girl-focused agency look like? Could it be housed within Status of Women? How could it advance the kind of participatory roles I have spoken about, and how could it involve girls and young women in advisory ways? How could such a body also integrate some aspect of “what about the boys”? The complexity of studying the economic prospects for girls demands this type of attention, and it would be an important move on the part of such bodies as Status of Women Canada to establish some type of directorate on girls that speaks to the situation for girls in Canada but that is also linked to Canadian initiatives in the world through CIDA, IDRC, and other institutions.
These are my four recommendations. I thank you for your attention. Thank you.