“Governing” the “Girl Effect” through Sport, Gender and Development? Postcolonial Girlhoods, Constellations of Aid and Global Corporate Social Engagement

The “Girl Effect” is becoming a growing global movement that assumes young women are catalysts capable of bringing social and economic change to their families, communities and countries, particularly in the Two-Thirds World. The evolving discourse associated with the Girl Effect movement holds implications for sport, gender and development (SGD) programs. Increasingly, SGD interventions are funded and implemented by transnational corporations (TNCs) as part of the mounting portfolio of global corporate social engagement (GCSE) initiatives in development. Drawing on postcolonial feminist international relations theory, cultural studies of girlhood, sociology of sport and governmentality studies, the purpose of this study was to explore: a) how young women in Eastern Uganda experience SGD programs; and b) how constellations of aid relations among a sport transnational corporation (STNC), international non-governmental organization (INGO), and southern non-governmental organization (SNGO) impacted and influenced the ways that SGD programs are executed, implemented and “taken up” by young women. This study used qualitative methods, including 35 semi-structured in-depth interviews with organizational staff members and young women, participant observation and document analysis in order to investigate how a SGD program in Eastern Uganda that is funded by a STNC and INGO used martial arts to build young women’s self-defence skills to help address gender-based, sexual and domestic violence. Results revealed martial arts programming increased confidence, challenged gender norms, augmented social networks and provided social entrepreneurial opportunities. At the same time, the program also attempted to govern young women’s sexuality and health, but did so while ignoring culturally distinct gender relations. Findings also highlighted the colonial residue and power of aid relations, STNC’s brand authority over SGD programming, the involvement of Western actors in locating “authentic” subaltern stories about social entrepreneurial work in SGD, and how the politics of the “global” sisterhood is enmeshed in saving “distant others” in gender and development work. Overall, this study found that the drive for GCSE, when entangled with neo-liberal globalization, impels actors working in SGD to look to social innovation and entrepreneurship as strategies for survival in an increasingly competitive international development climate.Ph