Girls engaging in activism to end child marriage in Sierra Leone: Negotiating power, interacting with others and redefining their own lives

Abstract

Children's right to participate has been one of the most challenging rights to implement due to dominant norms which position children under adults' authority. Notably, this has more negatively impacted girls than boys due to traditional gender norms and practices that often restrict girls' agency and are reproduced and unchallenged in many societies. To contest these struggles, young female activists (13–17 years) in Sierra Leone, who are the focus of this paper, engaged in direct actions to influence public decision‐making and prevent girls from being married during childhood. Drawing upon empirical evidence exploring the girls' activism experiences, this article explore, young female activists' practical work is an example of what intersectionality as praxis means by connecting social categories to inequalities and highlights that they saw themselves as social actors with the ability to negotiate power, take part in community‐based activism to end child marriage and network with others to seek justice for practices and attitudes they perceived to be abusive.

Rethinking child and youth activism in challenging times

“…Cuevas‐Parra and Zhu (2023) also note the support of adults in training and opportunity building for youth alongside young people's central role in creating change. Their article moves away from a homogenised notion of adults, with one youth participant in their research noting the relationship with parents and their understanding/acceptance (or lack thereof) of children and young people's activism.…”

“…Intersectional dimensions matter both within activist spaces and initiatives themselves, as well as in research about such activism. Intersectional activism can be defined as emancipatory and activist processes, relationalities and experiences towards change that focus on addressing intersectional discrimination and the dismantling of hegemonic whiteness (Cuevas‐Parra & Zhu, 2023). Indeed, many activist movements—such as the Black Lives Matter movement—are explicitly driven by intersectional principles and foreground the fight for racial justice.…”

“…A few articles in this special issue consider intersectionality, either explicitly or implicitly. For example, Cuevas‐Parra and Zhu (2023) work focuses on girls engaging in activism to end child marriage in Sierra Leone and provides an example of intersectional activism and intersectionality as praxis. Cuevas‐Parra and Zhu (2023) explicitly operationalise intersectionality as a framework and as a praxis to analyse the girls' activism to end child marriage at the intersections of patriarchy, gender, race, culture, ethnicity, geography, age and living in poverty.…”