Th e publishing of the articles in this issue of Girlhood Studies co incides with the global events related to the First International Day of the Girl—11 October 2012. Th is is a day formally declared by the United Nations as the one set aside to articulate the challenges girls face and to promote girls’ empowerment and the fulfi llment of their human rights. Th e actual process of gaining offi cial recognition through the United Nations for a specifi c day is no small feat. Th e eff orts of organizations such as Plan International and even government bodies such as the Status of Women in Canada were key in making this happen in order to address the need for greater understanding of girl-specifi c issues. In the global context, for example, girls are three times more likely to be malnourished than boys. Of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, 70 percent are girls. In the Canadian context, as the Minister responsible for the Status of Women highlighted in an International Day of the Girl message, young women from the ages of fi fteen to nineteen years experience nearly ten times the rate of date violence as do young men. Close to 70 percent of victims of internet intimidation are women or young girls, and girls and young women are nearly twice as likely as young men and boys to suff er certain mental health problems such as depression, and anxiety about body image and self-esteem remains prevalent among girls. Th us, while October 11 is a time for celebration, it is also a time for refl ection and a reminder about how much work there is still to do. Just how much this entails was very evident in the days surrounding the fi rst International Day of the Girl. Two days earlier, the fourteenyear-old girl activist Malala Yousafzai was shot and critically wounded by the Taliban in Pakistan for her role in taking action to promote girls’ education, and on 10 October a Canadian girl, fi fteen-year-old Amanda Todd of Coquitlam in the province of British Columbia,