The Promises of Empowered Girls

Everyone loves empowered girls – those “can-do” girls who succeed in school, postpone motherhood, have a voice, star in athletics, and believe they can have it all. Empowered girls solve social problems from inter-generational poverty to traditional gender imbalances in leadership, residual sexism in occupations and schooling, and work-family tensions. Successful girls, and the women they will become, make us happy. This chapter inquires into girl success as a global object of desire and into what empowered girls promise and explores the ideas of girls that are mobilized and the affective connections around girls, gender, activism, and success through an examination of two climate change activists and their transnational campaigns, Greta Thunberg and Disha Ravi, to inquire into the conceptualizations of specific girls’ empowerment.