Background
Stories of Girls Resistance documents the stories of girls, non-binary people and women ranging in age from 11 to 70. Collecting stories from people across this age span enables us to see what girls’ resistance looks like across contexts and over time, and to hear reflections from people across generations on their earliest moments of resistance. Through the eyes of the storytellers, we start to understand how acts of resistance – from seemingly small to much larger – start in girlhood and transition far into adulthood, transcending time and place.
A lot of people just think girls don’t have a voice. I hate when people say we work for the voiceless. Who told you they’re voiceless? They always have a voice, it just needs to come out. Right now, my resistance is more powerful. It’s the kind of resistance that makes people stop and stare. I go into offices and people are like, ‘We heard you on the radio! This issue you’re dealing with, it’s very controversial, but we think it’s worth fighting for.’ Now, my resistance is power. It is fire.
Collecting stories from people across this age span enables us to see what girls’ resistance looks like across contexts and over time, and to hear reflections from people across generations on their earliest moments of resistance. Through the eyes of the storytellers, we start to understand how acts of resistance – from seemingly small to much larger – start in girlhood and transition far into adulthood, transcending time and place.
Each story holds a lifetime of wisdom and tells us so much about girls’ individual lives and their resistance journeys. And while there is power and insight in each story, there is collective wisdom that comes from looking at the connections between their stories – the similarities and threads that weave girls’ stories together. These connections allow us to explore the shared experience of girlhood and engage in questions about the role of power in girls’ lives.
Girls are full of power. In quiet everyday ways and through bold and loud actions, they are changing the world. Leading and embedded in the world’s most powerful justice struggles, girls are working across generations with young and old alike, to shape destinies for their households, communities and nations.
Throughout this project, we have held a deeply intersectional lens, doing our best to reach girls who hold multiple identities and, therefore, sit at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression. These are the girls and young people who hold the most powerful vision for what is possible for a different world, the clearest politics for what it will take to get there, and are fighting with the most brilliant and courageous strategies. Their lives and the lives of their communities depend on it.
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These are the stories of Black girls, Brown girls, traveller girls and Roma girls, Indigenous girls, Arab girls, refugee girls, veiled girls, rural girls, formerly incarcerated girls, illiterate girls, immigrant girls, intersex girls, cis girls, trans girls, bi-sexual girls and lesbians; they are girls with disabilities; they are girls living under occupation and through wars and in refugee camps, in totalitarian states and in urban slums. And their stories are completely erased or untold.
Until Now.