Final thoughts

Girls are often portrayed as a passive victim who is in need of saving, or a heroine who stood up against all odds in a single act of defiance.

All history is girls history

Girls come into their resistance in ways as rich and as varied as the stories in this collection.

The co-option of resistance

People’s activism is often born out of trauma and as they enter movements, instead of healing, they often face more trauma. Girls and young people often have little resources, considering financial circumstances and accessibility of services, to get the mental health and wellbeing support they need to heal from trauma. Often deepening trauma and leading to burnout, is an all too common expectation of self sacrifice for the movement at the expense of people’s wellbeing. People become boundaryless for the cause, put their own needs aside; provide support for other people who are in crisis; and take on the role of a superhero who can carry the burden of all without consequence. This can lead to depression, anxiety or other forms of mental health impacts; poor physical health; and sheer depletion. It turns some people away from movements as the only way to survive. And for some, it leads to cultivating and sharing practices of self, collective and community care, pulling from ancestral traditions and healing methodologies.

Resisting without resources

As the charitable industrial complex benefits from the bodies of girls, so too are girls distanced from the resources – and explicitly the money – needed to define and move their own agendas. Indeed, the deeply uneven distribution of resources, even within movement spaces, means that girls are organising without even the minimum of financial backing. Many, if not most, fund their activism through other forms of work, including multiple forms of care work. For some, there is a complex interplay between day jobs at NGOs, INGOs and within State institutions – and the more radical, revolutionary work they do at night.

Crisis and burnout

People’s activism is often born out of trauma and as they enter movements, instead of healing, they often face more trauma. Girls and young people often have little resources, considering financial circumstances and accessibility of services, to get the mental health and wellbeing support they need to heal from trauma. Often deepening trauma and leading to burnout, is an all too common expectation of self sacrifice for the movement at the expense of people’s wellbeing. People become boundaryless for the cause, put their own needs aside; provide support for other people who are in crisis; and take on the role of a superhero who can carry the burden of all without consequence. This can lead to depression, anxiety or other forms of mental health impacts; poor physical health; and sheer depletion. It turns some people away from movements as the only way to survive. And for some, it leads to cultivating and sharing practices of self, collective and community care, pulling from ancestral traditions and healing methodologies.

Violence in movements

From revolutionary political parties throughout history, to NGO structures to local collectives, spaces that are meant to house and foster progressive movements are too often sites of violence. As a deep seeded and often taboo topic, many girls enter into movements thinking they have found their community and a political home, but are met with experiences of violence. Internalised patriarchy and unhealthy power relations show up in and fester in movement spaces and organisations, often with little space to address, hold experiences with care, or enforce systems of accountability for those who created harm.

Censorship and backlash

From Syria to Sudan, Guyana to Nicaragua, India to Sri Lanka and beyond, the stories depict contexts of dictators, repressive governments, armed conflicts, and restrictive environments where girls, non binary people, women’s and LGBTQI rights and freedoms are under threat. Repressive regimes and closing civic spaces have a harsh and lasting impact on girls’ and womens’ lived realities. From whether they can attend school or how they are recognised and seen in public life, girls’ earliest experiences are shaped by the restrictions placed on their self expression, freedom of movement, and contributions to society. Girls experience and witness situations of extreme violence and backlash in all regions and corners of the world, from silenced creative expression, banned books, to people disappearing as a result of their activism.

Age-ism and adultism

In the same way that many of the stories lift up the solidarity, support and accompaniment that people from older generations provide, they also lift up experiences of being belittled, rejected, and pushed out by them. Ageism and adultism are a common and recurring reality for girls and young people, appearing in the home, at school, in their organisations and collectives and in broader movement spaces.

Complexity of resistance

In the face of all the violence that is so pervasive in girlhood, resistance brings some meaning, some small possibility that another way might be possible.

Roadmap to revolution

Despite the very different contexts in which girls are living, surviving, resisting, fighting and dreaming, there are striking similarities in the tactics and principles underlying how girls organise, strategise and make common cause with each other. These are perhaps unique to the moment girls enter this space – at a moment of awakening – before they are loaded up with all of our co-opted ways of naming, framing and doing work. There is also a diversity in how they approach the act of organising with each other, sometimes entering and modelling existing formal structures and sometimes completely reimagining and recreating structures. Their organising is far from stagnant and often closely tied to their own journeys of politicisation. The underlying truth reflected across all that they do – is that girls have a deep capacity to both imagine the world anew and embody what it will take to get there.