Creating the ‘Girl Effect’: Including boys and men to promote girls’ land and asset ownership

Abstract

Empowering women and girls to gain access to resources is necessary to close the gender asset gap and reduce poverty. I bring together how the gender and development (GAD) approach conceptualizes the inclusion of men and boys in development programming with an analysis of a ‘Girl Effect’ intervention seeking to empower adolescent girls through land. This analysis adds to scholarship on the Nike Foundation’s ‘Girl Effect’ campaign and reveals the structural, gendered relations of power that girls must contend with and how such empowerment includes boys and men. Modes of their inclusion indicate that the ‘Girl Effect’ has not always overcome previous GAD critiques.