http://msmagazine.com/blog/2017/09/26/recording-young-womens-global-revolution/
Please read and comment! Thank you!
The Lyrics for Generations Will Rize by Nattali Rize feat. Notis & Kabaka Pyramid have been translated into 2 languages
You wont see us on the TV, you wont read it in the news feed. but the time it come, Change keeps beating like a Drum. Cause The People have the Power, They keep Waking by the hour.And the Youth them see so they’re breaking Free from your mental slavery. Generations will Rize, Governments they will fall, We’re the only ones who will carry us through it all, If the words they are clear and the actions are strong, Oh my People We can’t go wrong… so hold on. hold on. hold on. hold on. Staring down their lie of democracy will you fight on your feet or live pon ur knees…? This is not the way that life’s supposed to be I’m callin’, callin’ yeah. These generations are making that change, they’ve learnt your system now they’re gonna rage, better take care and babylon you be aware, this a warnin’ warnin’ yeah. Generations will Rize, Governments they will fall, We’re the only ones who will carry us through it all, If the words they are clear and the actions are strong, Oh my People We can’t go wrong… so hold on. hold on. hold on. hold on. It’s just a drop inna di ocean of revolution, every ripple felt by the younger generation. Just Rize and take your stand where you belong cause it’s awakening, replacing them false religions. Truth it spread like wild fyah in di streets, any thing less than equal rights get delete cause higher consciousness we seek, open up your heart and let that inner voice speak. In the midst of these crazy times we’re gonna find our place, if we open up our hearts and let love lead the way. To the world that we want to see, we nah have no place for dem capitalism and dem economy. So open up your heart and let Love lead the way again.
https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Nattali-Rize-Notis-feat-Kabaka-Pyramid/Generations-Will-Rize
Brave Conclusion
It’s obvious that youth are our future, but few respect young people enough to find out where we’re headed under their leadership. What makes young people today different from older generations, in additions to their comfort with diversity in gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age, is their courage, education, and access to the Internet. If you re-read the quotations that begin each chapter you’ll see young women’s humanitarian commitment to justice and equality and their understanding that their issues are global. Although some young women think feminism means hating men, they usually believe in the fairness of equal opportunity.
After dialoguing with young people around the world for 15 years, the courage of young Muslim women is the most striking because they’re threatened with death, stoning, hellfire or not being marriageable if they don’t obey authority. Malala Yousafzai takes on opponents of education for girls despite being shot in the head and feels free to correct world leaders like President Obama on his drone policy. She’s famous but other Pakistani young women also risk extremists’ punishment for educating girls. Saudi women drive cars or video themselves wearing a skirt knowing their jobs could be taken away from them and they might put in jail. Egyptian women face police snipers and Libyan and Afghan women activists face death from extremists who want women to stay home. Tawakkol Karman ignored her father and husband who were worried over death threats on her life to continue to lead Yemen’s uprising.
Why are they so brave? As the best educated generation in history they learned to think for themselves and know how to access information. The widespread use of cellphones with cameras, even in regions without electricity, expands access to information and makes it difficult to hide abuses. This generation is better informed about global problems and those who are responsible for them. Motivated by a sense of justice and human rights, young feminists draw strength and information from international support groups on social media. Many have Internet “friends” from around the world and are empowered by seeing YouTube videos of women in the front line of demonstrations, facing off masked police with tear gas and water cannons. Young people with access to electricity grew up identifying with heroes in Western movies like the Lion King and books like those about Harry Potter and Hermione Granger who smartly challenge the powerful bad guys. Do you agree that most Western cartoons include nonconformists or at least problem solvers like Dora the Explorer? We’re also seeing feminist cartoons in Pakistan (the animated TV series the Burka Avenger) and India—Priya is shown on this book cover, the star of graphic novels.
On one hand, girl power is romanticized and proclaimed. On the other hand, women’s power is feared. Strong women like Hillary Clinton or Joice Mujuru (former Vice-President of Zimbabwe) are called unattractive bitch or witch. The fear of the “feminization” of power is a reaction to girls’ success in education as the majority of global college graduates, and their skill in cooperative team relationships required in the contemporary workplace and in progressive groups. Countries like China give boys preference in college admission as girls score higher on the entrance exam and China joins Iran in prohibiting certain college majors to women. As young women graduates become the majority of professionals, will they get past the glass ceiling to make a difference? Are they the harbingers of a future characterized by more democratic and relational organizing? The global uprisings that started with the Arab Spring in 2011 all advocate horizontalism, direct democracy and consensus decision-making, enunciated earlier by the Second Wave of feminism, as the prefigurative social system of the future.
The success of brave privileged educated young women is in sharp contrast to fearful illiterate poor girls who live in rural areas of developing countries or urban slums, represented by the interview with Mashal in Pakistan, discussed in Chapter 5. You read that she has no autonomy and had to turn down a free opportunity to be educated in our Open Door Literacy Project. Since over 80% of the world’s young people live in developing countries, poverty and illiteracy must be tackled with at least as much as the West spends on pets. With the largest populations, India and China are the countries to watch to see if they overcome patriarchal control of society and government. Can they provide equal opportunity for women and lift more people out of poverty, especially in India?
Smart brave girls are portrayed as saviors like Casey and Athena in the 2015 film Tomorrowland. This is not a new theme: I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation about the Victorian belief in the ability of pure Christian women to bring salvation to less refined men, as portrayed in novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The meme of grrrl power was coined by punk artists like the band Bikini Kill and their zines in the early 1990s, inspired by the black power movement. The danger is advertisers and development experts interpret girl power as the ability of individual enterprising young women to make money and consume products in developed countries or to make development efforts successful in low-income countries. Mattel’s “I can be” Barbie is an example of the sales pitch that girls can be anything they like; however one of their advertisements mostly shows Barbie caring for children as a mother or medical professional.[i]
Another danger of pretend girl power is young women are expected to do it all, be perfect, as seen in advertisements featuring a beautiful woman in a suit and heels, happily striding down the sidewalk carrying a briefcase and a baby. This pressure to be attractive and achieve is part of the explanation for rising anxiety and depression levels in girls in the US. This pressure also may make girls more vulnerable to criticism on social media and from peers. Girls were three-fourths of the depressed teens in a 2016 Johns Hopkins University study of interviews with more than 172,000 teens.[ii] The previous year the National Institute of Mental Health reported that about 30% of girls and 20% of boys have an anxiety disorder.[iii]
Nike’s Girl Effect campaign suggested that the key to lifting developing nations out of poverty is the adolescent girl, when in fact, girls obviously don’t have this power. The key is to change the neoliberal capitalist economic system that causes widening inequality in a world where only six (down from 62 in 2016) men have as much wealth as the bottom half of the population![iv] The World Economic Forum predicts it will take up to 170 years to achieve economic equality between women and men, partly due to the lack of aid funding that specifically targets women.[v] What I think is more important than clothing, is the 225 million women who want birth control but don’t have it—not just in developing nations. President Trump hired an anti-birth control advisor and his presidency encouraged Republicans who want to defund Planned Parenthood and health care.[vi]
The definition of female power as individual preference and style undercuts the First and Second Wave feminist understanding that change comes from persistent group efforts to pass new legislation like the vote or equality in federal spending on education. It took the First Wave never giving up and trying many tactics from 1848 to 1920 to pass the 19th amendment to the US constitution. Abortion was illegal until the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973 but access is steadily being rolled back in southern states. The Equal Rights Amendment proposed in 1923 still hasn’t passed. The attention on slut shaming, SlutWalks, fat shaming, gender pronouns, and cultural appropriation of hairstyles misses the big problems of women’s lack of power in government, business and in some families.
The Second Wave of feminism did the groundwork by naming the sexist problem that until then had no name (Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, 1963), organizing for political change on the street, in the boardrooms, and in legislatures. Role models of outspoken charismatic feminists like Gloria Steinem (born in 1934) were known globally for making the point that we need to do “outrageous acts and everyday rebellions” (Steinem’s 1983 book) and that the family is the starting point for patriarchal inequality. The UN and other NGOs organized internationally for recognition that women’s rights are human rights. Although the UN’s Beijing Platform for Action in 1995 spurred feminist organizing globally, no country has gender equality. The “Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action Turns 20” provides a blueprint for global progress towards gender equality.[vii]
Actors Emma Watson (born in 1990) and Lena Dunham (born in 1986) are inspired by Steinem to bring feminism to their generation, as in Watson’s work with the UN’s HeForShe and her bookclub and Dunham’s feminist publishing imprint called Lenny. We can learn from the best-organized student groups with active young women co-leaders in Chile and Quebec. Some of them decided to run for political office in both places. Will they be able to change the system from the inside? Some studies show that women leaders do more for their constituents and work more harmoniously in a group, and that they’re less likely to enter warfare. We’ll see. A recent hopeful tendency is for women’s rights groups to network with other activist groups, such as environmentalists, immigrant rights and LGBT rights, as evidenced in recent global Women’s Marches.
As well as being brave and well-educated, young women and men are optimistic even in the face of pessimistic projections for future trends. Climate change and global warming is the most pressing problem as we threaten to destroy the environment with our consumption of fossil fuel, misuse of the soil and water, destruction of forests, factory production of cattle, and more abuses. Advertisers’ push for us to consume more and more is bad for the environment, especially buying beef and vehicles. Other current issues globally are youth bulges in developing countries and the graying of developed countries (the global population will increase to almost nine million people by 2035), the spread of ethnic populism and nationalism, identity politics that divide countries like the US, threat from young Muslim extremists terrorists, loss of jobs to robots and other technology, very high youth unemployment, migration (1 in 112 persons is a migrant), urbanization and slums, and continued reliance on warfare to resolve conflicts. In addition to hot wars we suffer from “gray zone” unconventional warfare, such as Russia’s use of the Internet to hack information and to spread propaganda through bots to influence elections.
Democracy can’t be taken for granted, as Freedom House reports almost twice as many countries have gone backward as those that have become more democratic: In 2016, 45% were free, 30% partly free, and 25% not free.[viii] The global uprisings that began with the Arab Spring in 2011 continue around the world as young people stand up for freedom and oppose authoritarian governments. The uprisings will continue as democracy is under attack and economic inequality increases rather than narrows. Although we’ve lifted a billion people out of extreme poverty, 10% remain very poor, living on less than $2 a day. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals address these issues. Economic growth is predicted to slow after 70 years of neoliberal policies but large debts limit government funding of social programs. The most resilient economies will utilize the talents of all groups, not just men. If they don’t, young people will lead more uprisings, like the Russian teenagers who chanted to Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, “While you were stealing money, we were growing!” during protests against corruption in 2017.
Patriarchal attitudes viewing women as important mainly as sex objects or mothers continue among powerful old men such as Presidents Trump who thought his fame gave him permission to grab women’s genitalia, Erdogan who says a Turkish woman without a child is a half woman, and Putin who said, “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days,” and encourages Russian women to have many children.[ix] We see improvement in some of the spate of Generation X men in their late 30s who were in power in 2017 in Canada, France, Ukraine, Estonia, Greece, Macedonia, North Korea, Bhutan, Qatar, and previously in Italy from 2014 to 2016 under Matteo Renzi.[x] A difference is some of them are more comfortable sharing leadership with women, as when President Macron and Prime Minister Trudeau selected women to be half of their cabinet members. And Generations Y, Z, and Alpha are more egalitarian than these Gen X men.
We can be hopeful about the future because Gen X has liberal viewpoints, according to a large global survey in 2017.[xi] Opposing prejudice, 89% believe that men and women should be treated equally (especially in Canada and China), 74% believe that transgender people should have rights, 66% believe in safe and legal abortion, 63% believe same-sex marriage should be legal, but only about half believe in free speech if it’s offensive to religion or minority groups. Support for free speech is highest in Turkey and Argentina–countries with a history of authoritarian governments, and lowest in Nigeria and China. Young people in 14 out of the 20 countries are supportive of immigrant rights in their country. Few think a person’s religion is an important factor in selecting a friend. Only 3% think fame is the most important factor in choosing a career. It’s hopeful for our planetary future that Gen X cares about relationships and doing service more than making money or becoming famous.
In the West, Miley Cyrus-style feminism has devolved into a discussion of “slut shaming” and the right to show a lot of skin or be bisexual, influenced by neoliberal individualistic consumerism. We need a global feminism that unites around providing education and health care for young people and gets over the fear of being called man haters. Girls and women are most of the people who are illiterate, victims of domestic violence and those forced into early marriage and childbirth. International surveys of people show that the majority of people favor equality. The future depends on educating both girls and boys, including about how to protect the environment and stop global warming. Young women will continue to lead uprisings against patriarchal autocrats.
Please email gkimball@csuchico.edu to share your observations about how young people will shape our future and share local solutions to human problems—the topic of my next book. [xii]
[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf-kRKdjL6Q
[ii] “Depression on the Rise Among Teens, Especially Girls,” HUB Staff Report, November 16, 2016.
https://hub.jhu.edu/2016/11/16/adolescent-depression-study/
[iii] Susanna Schrobsdorff, “Teen Depression and Anxiety: Why the Kids Are Not Alright,” TIME Magazine, October 27, 2016.
http://time.com/magazine/us/4547305/november-7th-2016-vol-188-no-19-u-s/
[iv] “Just 8 Men Own Same Wealth as Half the World,” Oxfam, January 16, 2017.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world
[v] http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/
[vi] http://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/a-new-war-on-birth-control-trumps-victory-has-empowered-the-sex-scolds/
[vii] https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/1776The%20Beijing%20Declaration%20and%20Platform%20for%20Action%20turns%2020.pdf
[viii] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017
[ix] Alana Abramson, “Vladimir Putin Tells Oliver Stone: ‘I Am Not A Woman, So I Don’t Have Bad Days,’” TIME Magazine, June 6, 2017.
http://time.com/4808298/vladimir-putin-oliver-stone-interview/
[x] Eliza Relman, Heads of State Under 40,” Business Insider, April 18, 2017.
[xi] Emma Broadbent, et al., “Generation Z: Global Citizenship Survey,” Varkey Foundation, January 2017.
[xii] https://greenlocalsolutions.wordpress.com
https://www.facebook.com/modelsolutions
Thanks, Dr. Kimball, for giving us this opportunity to say what we want to say. As the old saying goes, the most ordinary people are the most beautiful.
Spring Grass, 15, f, China
I’m afraid of no one. Pakistani activist Malala Yusafzay
I never knew there were such remarkable moments where not only women alone, but some men, and more importantly youth standing up and fighting for what they believe is right. It takes courage and dedication to not simply just go with the flow or hope that someone else will step in and make that change. I was surprised and so inspired by all of these courageous people and most being younger than me really puts me in my place when it comes to believing in a lot of what they are fighting for yet I’m doing close to nothing about it.
Martha, 22, California
Finally, we hear the authentic voices of young women from around the globe. Listen — they are the future. Encompassing views from traditional to radical, Brave… is a work unlike any other in the field of women’s studies. Rigorously researched, and including input from young women everywhere, it is a work not to be ignored. Morgan Brynnan, MLIS
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Kimball, Gayle, author |
Title: Brave: Young Women’s Global Revolution (in two volumes) / Gayle Kimball. | Vol. 1 Issues | Vol. 2 Regional Activism |
Description: First trade paperback original edition. | Equality Press. | Chico [California] ; Chico
Identifiers: ISBN 978-0-938795-57-5
Subjects: LCSH: Feminism—History—21st Century. | Women—History—21st Century. | BISAC: Feminism & Feminist Theory.
Classification: LCC HQ1155 .W686 2017 | DDC 305.4209/051
Table of Contents
Volume 1 Themes
Chapter 1 The Future is Female
Young Women’s Aspirations, What Motivates a Young Activist? Young Women Leaders, Why so Brave? Media Influence on Girls, Anti-Neoliberal Inequality, Young Women’s Activist Tactics, United Nations and Governments Stimulate Equality, Is the Future Female? Young Men’s Issues and Viewpoints
Chapter 2 Global Desire for Equality
Equality is Desired Globally, Females More Egalitarian, Claims that Women Leaders are More Peaceful, Women Politicians Make a Difference, Maternal Qualities Idealized as Compassionate Leadership, Women are Better Leaders? Do Women Organize Differently than Men? Existing Models of Feminist Societies, Opposition to Prejudice, How to Increase Women’s Influence on Government
Chapter 3 Global Status of Young Women
Inequality, Rural vs. Urban Sex Roles, Feminization of Poverty, Education is the Key, Health Issues, Violence Against Women
Chapter 4 Consumerism Targets “Girl Power”
Consumer Youth Religion?; Teen Identity Through Consumption; Social Unrest from Rising Expectations; How Youth Are Manipulated by Multinational Corporations; Negative Consequences of Consumerism; Youth Views about Materialism and Getting Rich; Traditional and Modern Beliefs: Moving Towards the Middle
Chapter 5 Global Media Both Helps and Inhibits Girls
Global Media is Pervasive and Changes Attitudes, Digital Divide, Teachers Compare their Generation With Their Students,
Indian Media, Mobile Phones and Social Media, The Internet Creates Global Youth Culture, Global Media Sells Consumerism, Media Addiction Creates Dumb Zombies, Media Exposure Makes Youth Opinionated and Brave, Hollywood Films Provide Global Activist Symbols, Media Facilitates Activism, Campaigns Against Sexualization of Girls, Covering Women’s News
Volume 2 Regions
Chapter 1 Feminist Waves in the West
Feminist Wave History, Second Wave Feminists, Second Wave Created Women’s Studies, Inequality Persists, Generation Gap, Third Wave Response, Rejection of Feminism? Fourth Wave, Women of Color, US Recent Feminist Actions
Chapter 2 Women and Development
Girls and Women’s Importance in Development, Transnational Feminism Opposes Neoliberalism, Post-Colonial Feminists and Development, Feminist Development Organizations
Chapter 3 Latin American Horizontalism
Latin American Young Women’s Issues, Poverty, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil
Chapter 4 The African Way
African Values, Poverty and Development, Health Issues, Education, Women’s Movements, Young Women Feminists
Chapter 5 Brave Women in Muslim Countries
The Middle East Background, The Most Gender Equal Arab Nations,
Women and Islam, Feminist Activists, Women’s Role in Recent Uprisings
Iran, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Morocco, Kurdish Rojava in Northern Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
Chapter 6 Egypt’s 18-Day Revolution
Traditional Male Dominance; Education; A Pioneering Feminist: Dr. Nawal El Saadawi’s Egyptian Union for Women; Precursors to Women Revolutionaries of 2011; Young Women in the 2011 Revolution; After the Revolution; Sexual Harassment is Common; Recent Feminism
Chapter 7 Russia Turns to Glamour
Traditional Gender Roles, Consumerism and Glamour, Putin Teaches Youth to be Nationalistic, Attitudes Towards Feminism, Female Rebels Against Putin
Chapter 8 China Fears Feminists
Maoist Marxism, Traditional Beliefs, China’s Gender Issues, Rural vs. Urban Youth Issues, Youth Issues in an Era of Change from Maoism to Capitalism, Current Chinese Issues, Recent Feminism
Chapter 9 India’s Grassroots Feminism
Youth Issues, The Gap Between Urban and Rural, Violence Against Girls and Women, The Impact of Religion on Gender Roles, Changing Sex Roles, Youth Activism in Politics, Feminism
Other Books by the Author
50/50 Marriage (Beacon Press)
50/50 Parenting (Lexington Books)
Ed. Women’s Culture (Scarecrow Press)
Ed. Women’s Culture Revisited. (Scarecrow Press)
The Religious Ideas of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Edwin Mellen Press)
Essential Energy Tools book and 3 videos. (Equality Press)
21st Century Families: Blueprints for Family-Friendly Workplaces,
Schools and Governments. (Equality Press)
The Teen Trip: The Complete Resource Guide (Equality Press)
Ed. Everything You Need to Know to Succeed After College (Equality
Press)
How to Survive Your Parents’ Divorce (Equality Press)
Ed., Quick Healthy Recipes: Literacy Fundraiser (Equality Press)
Your Mindful Guide to Academic Success: Beat Burnout (Equality Press)
Ageism in Youth Studies: A Maligned Generation (Cambridge Scholars Publishing)
Global Youth Values Transforming Our Future (Cambridge Scholars Press)
In Process
Democracy Uprisings Led by Global Youth
Tactics and Goals for Changemaking
Youth Viewpoints from 88 Countries
Our human future is precarious due to our self-centeredness and shortsightedness in not meeting the challenges of climate change and growing inequality between rich and poor. Even Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund– not regarded as a liberal institution, is concerned about these huge problems. This book explores the ideas and actions of young people from 88 countries. Their electronically connected activism is transforming global culture. My surveys of 4,149 young people from 2004 to 2016 aimed to see how they are transforming our lives and planetary future, as I summarize in a TED-style slide show.[ii] The survey questions, main answers, and list of the 88 countries are listed on the book webpage, links listed below. I aimed to survey people under age 20 because of their frankness and interviewed activists in their 20s. The surveys and interviews indicate that the new generation is uniquely altruistic, committed to peace and collaboration, and interconnected. Exceptionally brave girls and young women lead uprisings for democracy in tackling major political issues, as highlighted in the list of recent youth-led uprisings that follows this introduction.
Young people are the large majority in developing nations and the best-educated generation in history. Yet half of the new generation is poor and one fourth live on less than $1 a day.[iii] With the power given them by their numbers and their ability to communicate electronically with a global network, they catalyzed global uprisings. What I call the Relationship Generation tends to defy or ignore large bureaucratic institutions including government and religion, leading to the false charge of being apathetic, but they focus instead on direct democracy on the local level and loving their family and friends.
The dozen books I’ve written may seem to be on very different topics, but the common theme is exploring the ideas of groups who were neglected by researchers, writing among the first books on women’s culture, egalitarian couples and global (rather than regional) youth activism. I taught Women’s Studies and Sociology courses such as “Women Internationally” at California State University, Chico (CSUC) and struggled to find an interesting text on global women’s issues that wasn’t a disconnected anthology of ethnographies. Doing research on global youth activism, I especially searched for young women activists. Videos shown on TV news usually feature young men protesters on the streets but women lead or are important partners in fomenting global change. The book includes the sexist and ageist obstacles that girls face and their courage in challenging religious and political authorities. It’s part of a series of four, listed above in other books by the author.
Young people want to be heard with an open mind; this book provides a forum for the insights of the largest youth generation in history—1.5 billion ages 10 to 24, given various names such as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y and Z. In his most recent work, generations expert Neil Howe defines Gen Y as people born from 1982 to 2004. The period between childhood and adulthood is expanding as “tweens” are stimulated by media to act like teens, youth enter biological adolescence earlier, spend more time in school and therefore delay job seeking and marriage. The United Nations defines youth as ages 15 to 24 and adolescents as ages 10 to 19; I surveyed and interviewed young people younger than 20 and interviewed activists in their teens and 20s.
To learn how Generations Y and Z are shaping our future, I discovered a worldwide source of youth informants, many of them contacted through their teachers. I visited them in their homes and schools in Brazil, China, Cuba, Egypt, England, Greece, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland and Tanzania, and Turkey, as well as in all regions of the US. Dialogues ranged from Tahrir Square in Cairo; to Rio slums; to remote villages in Tanzania, India and Indonesia; to middle-class London and Shanghai homes; and Japanese and Turkish schools.
The best part of globetrotting was talking with young people in places as varied as Tahrir Square, tiny apartments in China, a colorfully painted home in Brazil, and large two-story homes in London and Northern India as well as email and Skype dialogues. Photographs of some of the young people can be seen on our Facebook Global Youth SpeakOut page and videotaped interviews are on YouTube’s “The Global Youth” channel (links below).
Any time I met people from another country, I asked them if they knew youth or their teachers in their country of origin. Over 80 teachers mailed or emailed their students’ responses to the 12 book questions, acknowledgements and questions are on the book webpage. I met some of the educators when they came to CSUC for a six-week study program for English teachers offered several times a year. People I meet at the gym led me to contacts in Korea, Brazil, and Mexico. I attended a Global Uprisings conference in Amsterdam in November 2013 where activists, journalists and academics presented their analysis of the upheavals that started with the Arab Spring in 2010. I interviewed activists there and continued discussion with them via email.
Snowball sampling was used when some teachers and students referred others. It’s a convenience sample rather than a statistically random sample, but respondents includes a wide variety of backgrounds: hundreds of rural Chinese students (see photos[iv]) village youth from Tanzania and Indonesia, students in a village in Northern India so remote the teacher has to walk an hour up hills to reach his classroom, kids from Rio and Shanghai slums, and demonstrators in Cairo, Athens, and Istanbul and in my hometown in Chico, California. In Tanzania, for example, a young guide I met there interviewed rural village youngsters in the north and the principal of a Muslim school I visited in Dar es Salaam assigned the questions to some of his students.
About 500 respondents came from Internet sites such as Sit Diary and Our Shared Shelf feminist book club on Goodreads, youth groups like Students Against Violence Everywhere, and educational organizations like the Yellow Sheep River Foundation that assists poor rural Chinese students. Various friends or language majors at CSUC translated the questions. I posted on all the Facebook pages listed under global youth but only got a few replies, as when Kevin in Trinidad introduced me to Taika in Ethiopia who recruited respondents at her school.
My main contact in China is Yuan whose English teacher (a former student of mine) gave the book questions to her university freshman in Wuhan. His answers were so thoughtful I followed up with more questions. We’ve been in close contact for almost a decade. He and his friends translated hundreds of surveys I got from an educational organization for rural students I found online. A friend of an Indian woman in Chico where I live in Northern California introduced me to a friend who I met in Singapore who gave me the name of his friend, a high school administrator in Southern India. An Indian student responded to an Internet post I made asking for input and he asked his father, a principal in Central India, to assign the book questions. I met principals when I was in Northern India and other principals through them, and got several Indian names from Youth-Leader magazine headquartered in Berlin.
he editor of the magazine, Eric Schneider, commented, “This huge study, with elaborate analysis of the early 21st Century youth environment is massive. We have not come across anything like it, before, and–no wonder, considering Kimball quoted voices of 4,000 youth.” Each of the 88 countries has a different access story, so this is not a uniform sample of middle-class youth answering multiple-choice questions on the Internet. For those who did have Internet, I was able to follow-up with more questions.
For the quantitative approach, over 4,000 written surveys were coded by frequency of response with 57% female respondents. All of the answers were quantified by creating categories based on frequency of the answer, summarized in the book website.[v] The questions are open-ended. Rather than starting with a thesis, I used Grounded Theory in that I collected the data, then coded it myself to be consistent as themes and patterns appeared after the fact, to develop a conclusion—globally, girls are bravely stepping out of old gender straightjackets. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. SPSS was used to see differences based on gender, age, and region—more differences showed up in the latter as gender differences were small.
Staying in family homes can be referred to as a form of ethnographic fieldwork. Qualitative insights were gained from in-person, Skype, and email interviews with young people as revealed in quotations throughout the book. Our dialogues were sometimes supportive as when a gay Chinese youth felt safe to talk to me and a Pakistani girl I’ve talked with since she was in high school emailed on her graduation from medical school, “Gayle Kimball, thank you for making me realize the light in me.” As Professor Jeffrey Jensen Arnett pointed out, we learn more from interviews than survey questions with determined responses, although current research is “heavily in favor of quantitative methods.” From the point of view of the study of social movements, I examined what resources enable an uprising to succeed. From the feminist point of view, I sought out female viewpoints and leadership in researching social movements and interviews with young changemakers. “History from the bottom” and feminist Standpoint Theory starts with the voices of un-famous young people, rather than famous “great men.” These approaches value and listen to unknown and oppressed groups, rather than studying powerful men or women who act like them such as Margaret Thatcher. Grounded theory is similar in valuing research drawn from the lived experiences of the target group. Chapters include many quotes in order to communicate the actual voices of youth who are usually discounted, as primary sources are the most innovative form of research.
Researchers Neglect Global Youth
Other large global youth studies often draw from young people who have access to Internet, as listed on the book webpage. Many are conducted for marketing research. For example, Don Tapscott surveyed youth from 12 countries but most of his book quotes from the Digital Generation are North Americans, mainly his children. Other marketers are Habbo and InSites Consulting virtual world surveys, Martin Lindstrom’s BRANDchild, and Elissa Moses. The Varkey Foundation released a study that claims to be the first and largest global survey of Generation Z attitudes in 2017 because there’s “very little in-depth reputable polling on the opinions and attitudes of Generation Z.” [vi]It surveyed 20,088 young people with Internet access, ages 15 to 21 from 20 representative countries in 2016. It confirmed my survey findings that youth have a global culture. The lead researcher of a global marketing survey of kids aged six to 12 replied to my question about their respondents, “The survey was an online study, which means that respondents in all of the countries have sufficient income to have a computer/mobile device and internet service. Also, our research vendor screened out the lowest incomes, because the consumer group we are interested in marketing to is not at poverty level.” In contrast, this book includes slum dwellers and rural youth who may not have electricity. Surveys are also conducted by non-government agencies like UNICEF or Fondation Pour L’Innovation Politique whose findings are not available in books. Many of these NGO global youth surveys are about tobacco use or other health issues.
Youth Studies have been published in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence since in 1972, followed by Youth Studies in 1998, the Journal of Youth Studies in 2000, and Youth Voice Journal since 2010 and others.[vii] Universities like the University of Minnesota offer a major in Youth Studies, but “youth-centered definitions of their lives remain largely absent. Young people have not been enfranchised by the research conducted on their lives.”[viii] Youth studies focused on developmental stages in the transition to adulthood, with the more recent stage of “emerging adulthood,” as young people delay marriage and careers. Australian youth studies professor Anita Harris advocates that youth researchers do “participatory action research” and become less fixated on linear developmental stages, work and employment, because youth are interested in culture, leisure and sexuality.[ix] The focus on youth development as influenced by their particular generation is called the social generational paradigm, which some scholars criticize as the “new orthodoxy” in Youth Studies.[x]
Another approach, used in this book, looks at social generations as influenced by their particular historic circumstances, such as recession and the Internet for the current “App Generation” (the title of a 2014 book).[xi] The focus on youth development as influenced by their particular generation is called the social generational paradigm, which some scholars criticize as the “new orthodoxy” in Youth Studies.[xii] Sociologist Karl Mannheim discussed “The problem of generations” in a 1923 essay. Other scholars like Canadian James Côté emphasize the negative impact of neoliberal capitalism and growing inequality with high youth un- or under-employment that impacts various generations. Along this line, British scholars like Alan France and Steven Roberts think class is an important determinant of youth issues rather than generational differences, similar to the earlier interest in subcultures of working class boys at the influential Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in the 1970s. I don’t see any conflicts, just different focal points as class and precarious employment are both influential.
My scan of the Journal of Youth Studies from 2011 to 2014 found only 26 titles on youth activism or political attitudes out of 224 articles and 10 of the titles were about youth attitudes towards traditional politics.[xiii] Amazingly, not one article was about the uprisings that started in 2011 discussed in this book. A similar search of the Journal of Adolescence found only one issue on political engagement but not rebellions (June 2012), with no other such articles in other issues.[xiv] Current Sociology published an issue on “From Indignation to Occupation” in 2013 reporting on the 2011 uprisings but without focus on youth.[xv] Online journals–Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements and ROAR, do provide current information about social movements but not specifically about youth. A scholarly publication about social movements is Mobilization and its blog Mobilizing Ideas.[xvi] Reflections on a Revolution (ROAR) is more international and less academic than the US-dominated Mobilization.
Psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett pointed out that the study of adolescence began in the US early in the 20th century and the study of US adolescents still dominates the field.[xvii] He reports that most of the scholarly journals devoted to the age group 10 to 25 are mostly from the US with an occasional European researcher. The Journal of Youth Studies includes studies from Canada, Australia, Germany and Sweden, as well as the US and the UK. Girls Studies includes courses, an international association, online faculty discussion group, and Girlhood Studies journal, with especially active British Commonwealth researchers.[xviii] Women’s Studies has spread to over 600 universities around the world, with an National Women’s Studies Association headquartered in Maryland.
Brave focuses on countries where most young people live because many of the books about Generation Y describe how to manage them in the US workforce. Much of the generational research is done in the US and the UK. Most of the academic books on global youth are anthologies of specialized ethnographies about small groups of young people in various regions without much connection between chapters. While these anthologies have opened important conversations, one such book includes chapters on Thai makeup saleswomen, former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, Latino use of political graphic art, a Sri Lankan refugee, etc. Searching through 15 pages of Amazon.com books listed under “global youth,” I found anthologies, youth ministry, how to market to youth, deviant behavior, by country (such as youth in China), or unemployment, but no overviews of global youth activism except this series.
Books that report on young feminists include Defending Our Dreams: Global Feminist Voices for a New Generation (2005), an anthology written by transnational feminists in their late 20s and early 30s.[xix] They emphasize international human rights law as the key to women’s liberation in the only book I found representing young feminists from many continents. Half the Sky, a book and video by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, tells the story of women activists of various ages in Africa and Asia (2010). Three books interviewed urban youth activists in the Americas before the global uprisings of 2011: Jessica Taft, Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas, 2010; Hava Rachel Gordon, We Fight to Win: Inequality and the Politics of Youth Activism (2010); and Maria De Los Angeles Torres, Irene Rizzini, and Norma Del Rio, Citizens in the Present: Youth Civic Engagement in the Americas, 2013. US feminists report on their activism in Mary Trigg’s Leading the Way: Young Women’s Activism for Social Change (2010). Girls’ media activism in Australia, England and the US is discussed in Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism (2008), edited by Australian Anita Harris. She pointed out, “Very little has been said about either the political participation or nonparticipation of young women in particular,” with the exception of feminist “generation wars” and criticisms of the quieter political activism of the Third Wave of young feminists.
Similar to Harris, Taft reported in Rebel Girls that, “Despite their activism, girls are rarely considered and written about as significant political actors. They appear but do not speak.” They’re left out of academic research on girls’ studies and on youth movements. Taft says that the focus is on college students rather than teenagers. Despite the increasing interest in girls’ studies over the last two decades, Emily Bent agrees that “the research on girls and politics is surprisingly incomplete” and invisible.[xx] Most of the interest in girls’ studies, youth studies, and children’s rights focuses on their future impact on politics when they can vote rather than girls’ current activism. Youth want to be leaders now. However, several international studies cited by Bent found that girls valued political participation as much or more than boys, although some of them view it as a masculine arena. Girls were more likely to imagine themselves becoming politically involved in the future if the media discussed women politicians. Anita Harris points out that some girls are interested in politics, but consider the traditional forms corrupt and dismissive of their views. An editor of We Got Issues! A Young Woman’s Guide to a Bold, Courageous and Empowered Life (2006), reported, “Young women in this country expect to be ignored. Most young women believe that people don’t really want to know what we think.”[xxi]
The editors of a book on Student Activism in Asia (2012), like the few other researchers on youth activism, complain that despite the visibility of student protests and their vanguard actions, because it is so common, “It seems to require no explanation.”[xxii] They point out the lack of comparative research on the causes and effects of student activism, with the exception of some interest in specific local uprisings in the 1960s and 70s. I in turn wonder about their lack of mention of young women’s roles or feminism. Editor Meredith Weiss kindly emailed in 2015, “You will find women involved alongside men in activism in all states in the region, across periods, but I can’t think off-hand of any Asian (or other) state in which feminism per se has been a guiding frame or objective for student mobilization overall. “
The only books specifically about youth and the recent uprisings are about the Middle East: Maytha Alhassen and Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, editors, Demanding Dignity: Young Voices from the Front Lines of the Arab Revolutions, 2012; Alcinda Honwana, Youth and Revolution in Tunisia, 2013; Juan Cole, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East (2014); and Ahmed Tohamy Abdelhay. Youth Activism in Egypt: Islamism, Political Protest and Revolution, 2015. The book is $104, inaccessible to most. I turned down book contract offers from two academic publishers who intended to charge $100 for a hardback book.
Four books published from 2012 to 2016 cover the global uprisings but not with analysis of the role of young people: Paul Mason, Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions; an anthology by Anya Schiffrin and Eamon Kircher-Allen, From Cairo to Wall Street: Voices From the Global Spring including activists in their 20s and 30s. Internet ebooks by Werner Puschra and Sara Burke are titled The Future We the People Need: Voices from New Social Movements and World Protests 2006-2013. The latest books are They Can’t Represent us! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy by Marina Sitrin and Dario Azzellini (2014) and Occupy! A Global Movement (2014), a $150 anthology edited by Jenny Pickerill, et al. In Youth Rising? The Politics of Youth in the Global Economy (2015) Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock do focus on the portrayal of youth in global uprisings, but acknowledge that they too do not include their actual voices. Their thesis is that although youth played a vital part as activists, their role is exaggerated in order to benefit the interests of neoliberal elites to deflect attention from the structural problems in the existing capitalist system. They don’t consider sex roles in activist groups: Fascism is included in the index but not feminism. The 2016 book This is an Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler focuses on nonviolent direct action but barely mentions youth leadership. I advocate that researchers address ageism and change the common practice of speaking about youth without including their voices.
Viewpoint
This book contributes to Women’s Studies, Girls’ Studies, Youth Studies, Global Studies and International Education. My perspective fits with Women’s Studies (my teaching background), Cultural Studies, public sociology advocacy and Political Science’s Social Movement Theory. My interviews with youth are oral history, first-person narratives with people who participated in or observed uprisings. Feminism can serve to “undermine what has been the dominant tendency of academic and organization thought: a strongly objectivist tendency, uncomfortable with the modes of intuitive observation and ambiguous responses.” [xxiii] The pretense of an objective observer is replaced with an activist scholar who aims to be of use to the people she or he studies. Both the study of art and feminism “subvert the very structure of thought.”
Feminist scholarship takes seriously the lives of the undervalued and marginal, such as youth or lower classes, and facilitates working for social transformation, creating “history from the bottom up.” Feminist interest in marginalized people as the focus of study is called Standpoint Theory where the observations of the grassroots and marginalized are valued. It developed in the 1970s out of Marxist feminist thought, maintaining that research that focuses on power relations should start with the oppressed. I agree with Chandra Talpade Mohanty who advocates that feminists should focus on activism in opposition to neoliberal capitalism and use advocacy research or “militant research,” defined as the place where academia and activism meet. Rather than just observe, activist scholars participate in political movements that create new values and relationships. My research, for example, led me to start a literacy program for Pakistani girls including a fundraiser cookbook of quick healthy recipes, and assist some of the book respondents with college applications, as a sounding board for personal issues. What motivated me to research for a decade was being on a treasure hunt. With such a paucity of research on youth activism, I relished each discovery and each new activist who shared her experiences with me.
The main theoretical approaches to studying girls and young women are feminism and youth subcultures like punks or hip-hop that both involve resistance to dominant authorities.[xxiv] Youth subcultures were first studied at the University of Chicago starting in the 1920s with a focus on street gangs as a strategy to cope with poverty. Youth subcultures were made famous at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies starting in 1964. Their early studies were criticized by feminist scholars for focusing on class conflict among working class “lads” and their use of public spaces, ignoring what girls did in more private spaces at home. With the development of global marketing aimed at youth and neoliberal individualization, class became less relevant. Instead, scholars discussed nonactivist neotribes such as club scenes, lifestyles, networks, communities, etc. Anita Harris stated in 2008, “There is no longer any such thing as the truly ‘resistant’ youth subculture, because youth style and cultures have been appropriated by the consumer industries, depoliticized and packaged back to youth.”
In the focus on subcultures, youth social action was left out of the Birmingham School approach.[xxv] Sociologists have been criticized for neglecting the tactics of social movements “with their emphasis upon structural strain, generalized belief, and deprivation.”[xxvi] “Post-subcultural” debates ensued, interested in multinational and cross-generational projects. Professor Peter Kelly cautions against the influence of “governmentalized” studies of interest to government departments, corporations and NGOs, who are interested in topics like consumption preferences and youth alcohol and drug use.[xxvii]
Canadian James Côté explained that since the 1980s youth studies has focused on working class youth cultures, “increasingly preoccupied with subjectivities,” rather than approaching youth as a whole as a disadvantaged class or proletariat, to use Marxist terminology, disadvantaged economically as a class.[xxviii] He argues for “a new political economy of youth,” a conflict theory that generates radical solutions to these material problems. He opposes liberal reformist structural approaches that accept the neoliberal status quo. Côté faults youth studies for ignoring the negative impact of neoliberalism on youth who face an uncertain future while the number of very rich families that can pay for their children to attend expensive universities increases. Additionally, he warns of “growing stigmatization of youth over the past century,” especially in terms of claims of “biological inferiority” regarding the adolescent brain as being less rational and more impulsive than adult brains. Schools perpetuate subordination by teaching obedience to hierarchical authority. Côté said the flip side of this trend over the last two decades is increasingly painting adults as superior, responsible, and mature, although I would add that an objective look at the news does not back up this belief. As 13-year-old SpeakOut respondent Lia said in California, “For those who created this mess in a world of chaos, just like you said to us about our rooms, “Clean it up!”
Globalization and new media changed girls’ way of doing politics starting in the late 1980s in North America with grrrl power media, including zines, music like punk and rap, the Internet and its blogs and webcams opening up since 1991. Young women engage in culture jamming of commercial media and graffiti, creating a “new form of citizenship” and a new form of cultural politics in postmodern subcultures. The editors of Riot Grrrl zine wrote in 1992, “We’re tired of being written out–out of history, out of the ‘scene’, out of our bodies … for this reason we have created our zine and scene … be proud of being a grrrl.” Feminist girls around the world created a Third Wave partly in reaction to the Second Wave and social media, discussed in Volume 2 Chapter 1. This wave was based on a more fluid and hybrid notion of gender and resistance to multinational corporations’ power, sometimes surpassing national governments as the target for resistance.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, Youth Studies has been interested in transition to adulthood; characteristics of Generations X, Y, and Z; and adolescent brain development’s influence on risk taking, as seen in Australian Andy Furlong’s Youth Studies: An Introduction (2012). The newer concerns of youth studies are the complexity of the creation of youth identity and culture, international influences with global media and migration, and identifying ways to support positive youth development, as with school-based health centers.
The developmental approach is criticized for a myopic focus on economic transition from school to workplace and for assuming that the process of individualization is similar for adolescents everywhere. Definitions of youth behavior are socially constructed, thus relative. For example, children used to be viewed as little adults and still are in cultures that send children to hard work in mines, construction, sorting landfills and other dangerous jobs. In some cultures children are treated as little animals, as explained by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her biography Infidel (2007), about growing up in Somalia. The focus on child development in stages that we accept as obvious began in the 19th century as a spin off of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
As relativists, recent theorists believe that the writer and reader are subjective rather than objective and concepts change over time. Not just class, but gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual preference shape intersecting hybrid (a frequent concept about youth cultures) youth identities, as well as the influences of an adolescent’s home, school and work. Australian Johanna Wyn observes that ideas about youth as a social category are “likely to be at odds with young people’s own perceptions and experiences.”[xxix] Hence the need to consult with youth about policies that affect them, which seems obvious, but an ageist blind spot about youth concerns often gets in the way. (More on scholars’ ageism is discussed in Democracy Uprisings Led by Global Youth.)
The postmodern subcultural approach is more interested in the individual and intersecting categories. Moving away from the dualistic notion of male and female, for example, Facebook responded by adding 50 choices for gender preference for English-speaking users, including categories like androgyny, intersex, transgender, neither, gender questioning and pangender. It’s no longer cool to do binary thinking as in female and male, he or she. “Genderqueer” or “agender” people use pronouns like “ou” to replace he and she. Youth identity is shaped by gender, class, ethnicity, sexual preference, etc. This approach in turn created criticism in a dialectical process. Critical of postmodern or poststructural approaches, UCLA philosophy professor Douglas Kellner faults academics for “subjectivism and relativism, often bordering on nihilism,” and advocates instead critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School, a German Marxist-oriented research center.[xxx] This approach aims to be applicable to social change that can emerge from contradictions and crisis in capitalist societies and faults social theory today for being in “acute crisis” with its “fragmentation, trivialization, and academicization.”
Format
Young people’s own words and thoughts weave through every chapter of Brave. Young people critiqued every chapter. My main intent is to facilitate their voices being heard as they requested, to reveal their lived experiences of being female in a patriarchal global culture. To give a feeling for daily life in different countries, I refer to photographs and videos I’ve taken as well as commercial media. A filmography is listed in book webpage. Each chapter ends with discussion questions to ponder, activities, and films to watch.
Student comments are organized by age, with younger ones first. Some of the ages for the same person change throughout the book as we’ve corresponded for years. They’re identified by their first name or nickname– what ever they selected, age and gender as in “Chris, 16, f, England.” I corrected spelling and punctuation. Respondents are referred to as SpeakOut youth. They’re divided into “kids” 12 and younger, and “teens” 13 and older. I avoid “American” to describe people from the US, because a teacher from El Salvador pointed out he’s a Central American, Canadians are North Americans, and so on. The youth advisory board critiqued chapters and answered my questions. Anyone I quoted was emailed a copy of how I wrote about his or her statements or a follow-up question, if an email was available
Volume 1 looks at global issues that impact girls and women such as consumerism and media and the desire for equality and equal rights. Volume 2 discusses regional issues and activism in Muslim countries, developing countries in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and former communist countries of China and Russia.
Findings
Khue, a 16-year-old from Vietnam, asked me, “I would love to know your opinion of us, of people from my generation. During your journey did you find any new perspectives? Does your journey affect you in some ways?” I told her that traveling and talking to young people face-to-face and establishing relationships touched my heart and earned my respect for their openness and willingness to question authority. Teachers and students around the world are enduring friends who answer my unending questions, including book board member Hassan. Like Yuan in China, his answers to the book questions were so thoughtful, we engaged in long-lasting dialogue. He and I started a literacy program where he goes to villages near Peshawar, Pakistan to teach illiterate kids. Maheen, a young woman student at Hassan’s university, started teaching in our Open Doors Literacy Program in 2014. I’m impressed by young people’s wisdom and insights, but there seems to be a gulf between thoughtful caring ones who criticize their superficial peers who care about material things too much and ignore critical issues like climate change and inequality.
What surprised me was the similarity of urban youth viewpoints. Geographical differences did appear, such as concern about pollution in Eastern Europe, violence in US schools, the importance of having children in Sub-Saharan Africa, and anxiety about the college entrance exam in Asia. There’s a large difference in developed and developing nations on a continuum of individuality (valued in the West) and group identity and respect for elders valued in more traditional societies. I was interested to talk with highly educated young adults who expect their families to select their spouses, as in India, Pakistan, and Egypt. However, the Internet connects a global youth culture that shares a common slang, clothes, and music such as hip-hop with local variations. Youth activists I interviewed in places as far apart as Egypt, Brazil , Greece, Turkey and California prided themselves on being leaderless, operating with a new model. Influenced by their frequent contact with the decentralized and democratic World Wide Web, the old model of a pyramid with its hierarchy of power is irrelevant to many young people. This more democratic model will no doubt change the world as we know it, as practiced earlier in the global justice movement, feminism, and anarchist societies.
SpeakOut respondents are “green,” concerned about saving the planet from global warming and other human destruction, as they mentioned in their written responses. The exception is village youth like those I talked with in Indonesia and Pakistan who don’t know about climate change. Middle-class youth share being “wired” in frequent contact using their electronic devices and the Internet. “Sometimes I spend my time in front of laptop from afternoon until night. I really would like to change my bad habit,” reports Annisa in Indonesia (age 16). Some urban youth who can’t afford to buy computers or have access to them in school use Internet cafes and rent inexpensive cell phones with Internet access. They’re more egalitarian and accepting of diversity than older generations, less trusting of politicians.
I realized more fully that many people around the world do not share beliefs I accept as given. I think of marriage as based on falling in love; in Muslim and Hindu parts of the world, “love marriages,” are not the norm. A Saudi girl told me “they don’t work” and Indian teens said they’re based on lust. I don’t think of women’s hair as indecent, while some Muslim women are harassed if they don’t wear a headscarf. I’d never known an illiterate person, but some rural Chinese and East African students commented about their illiterate parents and a compelling interview with an illiterate village girl included in Chapter 3. I spoke with a West African who grew up routinely eating only every three days in the dry period of the year, making hunger more than an abstract concept. What SpeakOut young people and I share is a desire to end poverty, protect the environment, and to have peace.
Please respond with your comments and observations on the book website or to gkimball@csuchico.edu. I’m especially interested in your ideas about solutions to global economic, environmental and social problems for a future solutions book. Photos mentioned in the text are found on Facebook and the book website and video interviews are on YouTube.
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Media Sites
This website lists free videos about girls internationally: http://dayofthegirlsummit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/DayoftheGirl-resourceguide.pdf
*Films about global youth: http://wp.me/p47Q76-3J
*Supplemental information and sites to add your add comments on the book webpage: https://globalyouthbook.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=global%20youth%20speakout
*My photos of global youth and their homes: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.348956001796264.91437.160382763986923&type=1
*Over 100 video interviews with global youth: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGlobalyouth
*Literacy project in NW Pakistan: http://opendoorsliteracyproject.weebly.com.
[i] Agata Lisiak, “The Ballerina and the Blue Bra: Femininity in Recent Revolutionary Iconography,” Pismowidok, February 26, 2015.
http://pismowidok.org/index.php/one/article/view/162/290
[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znYyB4cQ1mY
[iii] www.unfpa.org/swp/2004/english/ch9/page8.htm
[v] https://globalyouthbook.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/top-4-responses-to-global-youth-survey/
https://globalyouthbook.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/social-movement-theories/
https://globalyouthbook.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/global-youth-activism-definitions/
[vi] Emma Broadbent, et al., “Generation Z: Global Citizenship Survey,” Varkey Foundation, January 2017.
[vii] Geraldine Pratt and Victoria Rosner, eds. The Global and the Intimate: Feminism in Our Time. Columbia University Press, 2012, p. 3.
[viii] Ibid, p. 21.
http://www.youthpolicy.org/research/journals/
[ix] Anita Harris, ed. Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism. Routledge, 2008, Introduction. p. 190.
[x] Alan France and Steven Roberts, “The Problem of Social Generations: a Critique of the New Emerging Orthodoxy in Youth Studies,” Youth Studies, August 20, 2014, pp. 215-230.
DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2014.94412
[xi] Dan Woodman and Johanna Wyn, “Class, Gender and Generation Matter,” Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 18, No. 10, July 2015.
DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2015.1048206
[xii] Alan France and Steven Roberts, “The Problem of Social Generations: a Critique of the New Emerging Orthodoxy in Youth Studies,” Youth Studies, August 20, 2014, pp. 215-230.
DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2014.94412
[xiii] http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjys20?open=16&repitition=0#vol_16
Following are the topics and date posted online that pertain to young women: how to involve young Canadian women in provincial public police development (August 2012), Peruvian youth activism for sexual health (November 2012), Australian girls’ attitudes towards women leaders (January 2013).
[xiv] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01401971/35/3
[xv] DOI:10.1177/0011392113479748
http://csi.sagepub.com/content/61/4/491.short
[xvi] http://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/category/essay-dialogues/
[xvii] Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, ed. Adolescent Psychology Around the World. Psychology Press, 2012, p. IX.
[xviii] http://www.uleth.ca/conreg/icys/call-for-papers
[xix] Shamillah Wilson, Anasuya Sengupta, Kristy Evans, eds. Defending Our Dreams: Global Feminist Voices for a New Generation. Zed Books and AWID, 2005.
[xx] Emily Bent, “The Boundaries of Girls’ Political Participation: A Critical Exploration of Girls’ Experiences as Delegates to the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women,” Global Studies of Childhood, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2013, p. 174.
[xxi] Rha Goddess and JLove Calderón. We Got Issues! A Young Woman’s Guide to a Bold, Courageous and Empowered Life. Inner Ocean Publishing, 2006.
[xxii] Meridith Weiss and Edward Aspinall, eds. Student Activism in Asia: Between Protest and Powerlessness. University of Minnesota Press, 2012, p. 1.
[xxiii] Shamillah Wilson, Anasuya Sengupta, Kristy Evans, eds. Defending Our Dreams: Global Feminist Voices for a New Generation. Zed Books and AWID, 2005, p. 205..
[xxiv] Anita Harris, ed. Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism. Routledge, 2008, Introduction.
[xxv] Mary Bucholtz, “Youth and Cultural Practice, “Annual Review of Anthropology, June 14, 2002, p. 539. 31: 525-552, 2002. http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/node/1
[xxvi] John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” AJS, Vol. 82, No. 6, p. 1212.
[xxvii] Peter Kelly, “An Untimely Future for Youth Studies,” Youth Studies Australia, 2011, Vol. 30, Issue 3, pp. 47-53.
[xxviii] James Côté, “Towards a New Political Economy of Youth,” Journal of Youth Studies, 2013.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257365589_Towards_a_new_political_economy_of_youth
[xxix] Samir Khalaf and Roseanne Saad Khalaf, Arab Youth: Social Mobilization in Times of Risk. Saqi Books, 2011, chapter by Johanna Wyn, p. 45.
[xxx] Douglas Kellner, “Critical Theory and the Crisis of Social Theory,” date unknown.
Brave: Young Women’s Global Revolution Volume 1 Themes
Gayle Kimball, Ph.D.
400 pages $9.99 eBook available now on Amazon and other platforms.
Vol. 2 about regional activism will follow in a few weeks.
Brave explores young women’s issues and activism globally, based on hundreds of interviews—some videotaped, and over 4,000 surveys from 88 countries. What makes Brave unique is its global rather than regional reach and its rare inclusion of many young women’s voices. The book includes popular cultural references and feminists’ critiques of the economic and political system. Volume 1 is about global issues and Volume 2 is about regional activism. Discussion questions and activities end each of the five chapters. Chapter titles are: The Future is Female, Global Desire for Equality, Global Status of Young Women, Consumerism Targets “Girl Power,” Global Media Both Helps and Inhibits Girls.
