Jösses Flickor, vilket trassel!

Abstract

Using the recent establishment of the International Day of the Girl Child as an analytical departure point this article addresses three different but intertwined challenges which Girlhood Studies are facing in relation to the contemporary construction of the girl as an important agent for social change. The construction of a historically significant girl represents a significant historical change, which requires further historical analysis and reflection. Seeking to untangle this temporal problem the article first discusses a number of problematic implications caused by the historiographical emphasis of the “invisibility of girls” within the research field. Furthermore, it discusses how this narrative of invisibility also has infused the ideals, norms and discourses among girlhood researchers. In the article I argue that this narrative represents a risk in relation to the current neo-liberal centering of the girl, as it might entail a tendency to approach all instances where the girl is noticed as a girl in an uncritical manner. The article then analyses how historians have framed the writing of the history of girls and girlhood. A project in which there seems to be an emancipatory ambition to affix a kind of eternal value to the girl, which can be viewed to be in correspondence with contemporary girl power discourses. The article thereafter discusses some historical aspects regarding the relationship between Girlhood Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies both in an international and in a Swedish context. I conclude the article by exemplifying how a more theoretical understanding of girls, girlhood and generation could be used as a framework in the investigation of the Nordic experience of forty years of gender equality politics.