Chapter 6: ”Son Enough”: Developing Girls’ Agency in India across Domestic and Civic Spheres through Feminist Media Practice

Economist Amartya Sen (1999) saw development as expanding freedoms and removing sources of “unfreedoms”, such as poverty, intolerance, and oppression, equally for all people. In this chapter, we humbly follow him, and other critically turned theorists and educators from international development, literacy studies, and feminism, in asking how we might expand the freedoms of girls. Great strides toward gender equality have been made all over the world during the last quarter century, as more women have achieved gains in education, health, and legal rights, such as property ownership and inheritance. At the same time, grievous gender-based disadvantage persists, and as documented by the World Development Report (World Bank, 2012), progress in gender equality has been hard-won, and it remains uneven and incomplete.