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Re-imagining roles: using collaborativeand creative research methodologies toexplore girls’ perspectives on gender,citizenship and schoolingLeigh-Anne Ingrama

a Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto,Toronto, ON, CanadaPublished online: 06 Feb 2014.

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Re-imagining roles: using collaborative and creative researchmethodologies to explore girls’ perspectives on gender, citizenshipand schooling

Leigh-Anne Ingram*

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

(Received 12 December 2012; accepted 27 November 2013)

Often girls are the objects of the camera’s lens and subjects of the researcher’sgaze. This article describes a qualitative study using a collaborative, creative andcritical methodology to explore girls’ perspectives on gender, citizenship andschooling. The seven adolescent girl participants used Photovoice to engage withtheir roles as girl-citizens. Despite Canada’s international reputation as a leader ingender equality, evidence reveals that challenges still prevent their full participa-tion, particularly in formal politics. This research raises questions about what lifeis like for girls and women in Canada beyond the rhetoric and global rankings,and adds to the often disconnected bodies of literature on girlhood, citizenshipand education.

Keywords: girls; gender equality; youth civic engagement; education forcitizenship; Photovoice; action research

I learned that we actually have power over the things that surround us … I think Ilearned this as we spoke of our pictures and problems in our society. Gender inequalitystill exists and is terrible but we were able to think of ways to solve the issues wenoticed. We are all young girls of many ethnicities and values but we all havesomething in our hearts: the belief in the possibility of a better day, a day of noinjustice and hate. A little belief and hope can bring you a long way. (Mihika,1 ProjectCitizen-girl participant, age 14)

Figure 1. Priya’s image of her own sneakers, to illustrate her desire to resist traditional ideasof femininity.

*Email: leighing@hotmail.com

© 2014 Educational Action Research

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IntroductionOften girls and young women are merely the objects of the camera’s lens and thesubjects of the researcher’s gaze. Traditional research, academic literature and theo-ries of citizenship and democracy are seldom written from the point of view of girlsand rarely do they explore how their citizenship is shaped by their various identities,including race, gender, class and cultural background. Indeed, Canada has main-tained an international reputation as a leader in gender equality, ranked by a UnitedNations study in 2012 as one of the best places in the world for women (Baldwin2012). In spite of this perception, recent evidence reveals that persistent challengesstill exist to the full participation of all citizens (Bickmore 1997; Bashevkin 2009;Hausman, Tyson, and Zahidi 2011).

How can collaborative approaches to research conducted with girls help usunderstand what young people are learning about their roles in society? In thispaper, I will describe a qualitative study that used a critical, collaborative andarts-informed research approach with a group of young women to put theparticipants at the centre of the inquiry (Gallagher 2008). This article has three maingoals: to present some of the key !ndings from this study about girls’ perspectiveson gender and citizenship; to explore the bene!ts and challenges of using a critical,collaborative and creative research design; and to share some re"ections about thisprocess and its impact on the participants, what Lather (1986) termed catalyticvalidity, and discuss some considerations for others who might employ similarresearch methodologies with youth.

BackgroundCanada is often regarded as a global leader in gender equality, and at the recent G20summit, held in Toronto, the Canadian government lobbies for greater gains on theMillennium Development Goals affecting girls and women, and in particular mater-nal and child health. Moreover, they also led an initiative at the United Nations todeclare an International Day of the Girl Child, which was successfully accomplishedin the fall of 2011. It is notable, then, that in spite of its global leadership, Canada’spolitical system remains surprisingly low on global measures of gender equality inpolitics (Hausman et al. 2010). Some recent studies have suggested that despite Can-ada’s success in addressing systemic sexism and racism, signi!cant challenges stillremain. A 2009 book by political scientist Sylvia Bashevkin, entitled Women,Power, Politics: Canada’s Un!nished Democracy, suggests that traditional gendersocialization persists, with continued barriers to women’s full participation in politicsand society (Bashevkin 2009). In addition, other research has pointed out connec-tions between continued gender socialization in the school system and larger genderinequalities in political and social structures. In particular, studies have pointed outthe gendered nature of Canadian curricula and schooling as an example byexamining social studies curricula (Bickmore 1997).

Other research has examined gender and civic participation across variouscountries, !nding differences in the civic attitudes and forms of civic and politicalparticipation of men and women (Arthur, Davies, and Hahn 2008; Hahn 1998;Kennedy, Hahn, and Lee 2007). In particular, Torney-Purta et al.’s (2001) studyexamined such patterns in 28 countries revealing differing attitudes and activitiesbetween boys and girls. However, there remains a signi!cant gap in the literatureregarding the complex relationship between gendered practices in schooling and civic

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or political participation (Foster 1996; Reay 2001; Ringrose 2007). Furthermore, it isunusual to !nd studies in the literature on citizenship education that connect discus-sions of citizen participation to intersectional analyses of gender, race, class andschooling. I would argue that this conceptual disconnect has serious consequences forhow young people of all backgrounds understand their roles in society.

Project setting and goalsThis project was situated in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), which is the largestcity in Canada and one of the most diverse in the world. The public school boardwhere most of the participants go to school has a variety of policy mandates, pro-grammes and materials related to anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-homophobia,which shape the environments in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) schools.The study brought together a group of seven ‘civically active’ young womenbetween the ages of 14 and 19 from a variety of cultural, racial, socio-economic andgeographic backgrounds, all of whom belong to a group organized by a Canadiannon-governmental organization (NGO), called the Girls Speakers Bureau. Most ofthe participants were born and raised in the GTA, while two moved to Canada aschildren (one from Sri Lanka and one from China).

Plan Canada is a non-pro!t organization that has projects around the worldfocused on girls’ rights, gender equality and international development. The GirlsSpeakers Bureau is a group organized by Plan Canada to bring together girls fromacross Canada for meetings designed to develop their skills in advocacy, publicspeaking and leadership. All of the participants joined after seeing adverts for thegirls’ initiative on subways and serve as youth representatives at a variety of venues,including school workshops and fund-raising activities, conferences, televisionappearances and government meetings in Canada and internationally. Theirparticipation in this group gave them access to a range of conversations, research,experiences and people that have obviously impacted their ideas about gender andthe participation of men and women in society.

Theoretical groundingsIn light of Canada’s growing cultural diversity and its comparatively low rate of polit-ical participation of women, it is important to examine what systemic issues affectwomen’s participation in society and lead to what I argue is a frequent mis-interpreta-tion of gendered patterns of citizen activities. Drawing on feminist theories, Freireianideas of critical pedagogy and documentary photography, this study used Photovoiceand interviews to explore girls’ ideas about their roles as females and citizens withintheir families, schools and society at large (Wang 1999; Baker and Wang 2006).

There is limited research in Canada exploring concepts of civic participation andcitizenship from the perspectives of girls and young women (Lather 1992; Arnotand Dillabough 2002; Pillow 2002; Savoie 2005), and much of the research relatedto girls is problematic for both theoretical and methodological reasons. First, overthe last 10 years, many of the studies examining gender have focused on a perceivedcrisis in boys’ literacy, shifting away from a critical examination of gender and thegender role of socialization that continues in families, schools and media (Bickmore1997; Foster 1996; Ringrose 2007). Some studies that do examine young people’sideas of civic participation are large scale, tracing out more global trends of

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participation between boys and girls (Hahn 1998; Torney-Purta et al. 2001). Otherresearch in this area sometimes positions youth, and girls in particular, as de!cientof civic values, devaluing their perspectives and continuing to view them as lackingthe dominant ideals of citizenship (Savoie 2005; Fine 2006).

As Lundy and others have argued, ‘participatory, visual methods can provide aspace, an audience, opportunity for voice for those that have been silenced, and mostimportantly, the opportunity for participants to see themselves as active citizens’(Lundy 2007 cited in Virgi and Mitchell 2011, 44). I sought to respond to theseimperatives discussed above by positioning girls as central to the research (instead ofthe mere objects of it) by using a democratic inquiry process. These young womenexplored their own identities and engagement in civic life using text and visuals, dis-cussed issues they were facing, and led group analysis of related issues. In this way,this article can add their voices (and visuals) to our understanding of education forcitizenship in a Canadian context, as well as communicating the learning from theresearch to non-academic audiences as well.

MethodologyMy inquiry process combined interviews, document analysis and a Photovoiceproject with youth. My methodological approach draws on the ideas of knowledgeas socially constructed and the !ndings as emerging out of interaction betweenresearcher and participants (Lather 1992; Pillow 2002; Denzin and Lincoln 2007).Photovoice is a form of participatory action research method where participants aregiven cameras to document their lives, revealing their own priorities and values(Baker and Wang 2006; Knowles and Cole 2008; Mitchell and Allnutt 2008; Prosserand Burke 2008). This inquiry process draws on feminist critiques (Crenshaw 1993;Foster 1996; Arnot and Dillabough 2002; Bernard-Powers 2008), Freireianapproaches to community development (Freire 1996), critical pedagogy (Apple1971, 2004; Giroux 1992) and participatory media.

The idea of a participatory, arts-based approach allowed for the research to be‘on, for and with’ people, as opposed to making participants passive subjects of anexpert researcher (Harrison 2002; Mitchell and Allnutt 2008; Prosser and Burke2008). Thus, following the lead of many current researchers (Joyappa and Martin1996; Lather 1986; Pillow 2002; Fine 2006), this study positioned the participantsas not just ‘incidental to the curiosity of the researcher, but [as] masters [or mis-tresses] of inquiry into the underlying causes of the events in their world’ (Freire1982 cited in Fine 2006, 310). Since one of the goals of this study was to under-stand, in depth, the perspectives of a small number of young women on schoolingand citizenship, I followed similar analysis processes used in qualitative research,drawing from narrative inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly 2000) as well as feministscholars, such as Kathleen Gallagher (2008), Michelle Fine (2006) and others usingcollaborative research. In line with qualitative principles, I sought connections acrosstheir experiences, but without erasing the complexity of their individual stories(Creswell 2007).

The study began in the fall of 2009 and concluded in June 2010, taking approxi-mately 10 months. We agreed to have a total of 10, four-hour to six-hour meetings,beginning with two meetings for orientation, planning, ethics and consent, as well asprinciples of photography and composition. In each photo-meeting, the girlspresented their images and re"ections individually, and then sorted everyone’s

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images into thematic piles. While I watched, the girls discussed the photographs andgave each pile a caption and theme, since the images had a !gurative or metaphori-cal meaning. In addition, the participants produced a total of 200 images that theyfelt were signi!cant in illustrating their own perspectives on self, gender, citizenshipand schooling, bringing between !ve and 10 photographs for each meeting. The pro-ject concluded with a photography exhibit at both the University of Toronto andPlan Canada where the girls invited family, friends, teachers, non-governmentalorganization representatives and a Member of Parliament.

Analysis processAs Luttrell (2000) has described, I also struggled as ‘researcher’ to develop ‘goodenough’ methods to capture the complexity of layered discourses and lived experi-ences of a group of intelligent complex young women. In spite of my own questionsabout traditional research methodologies, I was gripped with a desire to ‘get it right’and develop an analytic framework to make sense of our work. Moreover, I felt con-"icted about how to navigate a central tension in feminist research of focusing onindividual stories to identify themes across individual narratives in order to developtheoretical understandings (Luttrell 2000, 507). I decided to !nd a bridge betweenthe two extremes by including both narratives and themes emerging from the largergroup work.

Like Luttrell (2000), I recognize that one cannot entirely remove the hierarchythat shapes research relationships. However, I sought to make explicit my re"ectionsthroughout the analysis in order to address concerns about potential bias. Luttrellargues:

I don’t believe we can eliminate tensions, contradictions or power imbalances, but I dobelieve we can and should name them … the best we can do is to trace and documentour re"exive processes not just in general terms such as our class, gender, and ethnicbackground and how and why particular decisions are made at particular stages. (2000,500)

I thus sought to balance the authenticity of the discussions of the research partici-pants and their key themes with my own analysis as researcher, which proved to bea somewhat challenging task.

The analysis process began with the participants themselves selecting photo-graphs to begin group discussions, and this article will be focused on the !ndingsfrom the girls’ analyses. Additionally, I developed photo-narrative pro!les of eachparticipant as well as conducting a critical discourse analysis of the entire process,which will both appear in future publications. There is a range of analyticalapproaches for interpreting visual data (Becker 1986; Riessman 2007; Rose 2007;Lorenz 2010). Since the focus of my study was the perspectives and experiences ofthese seven girls, I drew on both thematic (Riessman 2007) and dialogic analysis(Williams 1984) and fore-grounded the stories, words and images that the partici-pants selected themselves. I relied on their own interpretations of their images andprovided some context as to why the girls selected these choices. To respond to con-cerns about the ‘truthfulness’ of the data, I took several measures. First, I used avariety of methods to gather data, including individual interviews, photograph pre-sentations and group discussions. Second, as a kind of member check, I provided

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the participants with the opportunity to review transcripts and participant pro!les toprovide feedback and corrections.

As with traditional focus groups, my goal was to be able to develop a picture ofareas of consensus of a small group of girls, as well as points of contrast and someindividual perspectives (Kitzinger 1994 cited in Waterton and Wynne 1999, 130).Critics of focus groups point out that they can overemphasize group consensus (Sim1998 cited in Waterton and Wynne 1999, 129) and may mask important contrastingideas in the push for group identity (Waterton and Wynne 1999). In some cases,scholars recommend that participants may tell stories to con!rm the communal iden-tity of the group and may sometimes actively avoid sharing experiences that departfrom those of the larger group (Kitzinger and Farquhar 1999, 167). In order torespond to some of the challenges of working with focus groups, I also includedindividual interviews and photograph presentations. Furthermore, as Waterton andWynne (1999, 136) suggest, I actively sought the participation of girls from verydifferent backgrounds in order to provide opportunities for a range of contrastingperspectives.

Throughout the process, my role shifted from researcher to participant to facilita-tor at different times in the process. Like Clandinin and Connelly (2000), I was alsoconcerned with developing positive relationships with the young women in thegroup and balancing closeness and trust with enough distance to be able to criticallyengage with their words and perspectives. By encouraging this "exibility of roles, Ihoped to build democratic relationships with our participants and disrupt some ofthe traditional power relations inherent in orthodox research.

Findings: girls’ perspectives on self, gender, citizenship and schoolingOver the course of several Photovoice group meetings, the participants shared theimages they had selected to represent their perspectives on self, gender, citizenshipand schooling. For the purposes of this article, I will present a selection of the 12key themes identi!ed by the research participants in their group discussions andanalyses. For the full list of themes identi!ed by the girls, see Table 1.

The girls de!ned themselves in complex ways, in relation to their families, theirfriends, and their cultural heritage. In many ways, these girls are like many otherteenagers: they talked about movies, television shows and Internet bloggers. In addi-tion, they see themselves as multifaceted, evolving and in "ux. The participants ofthis study also showed a complex and sometimes contradictory concept of genderand its meaning in their lives. They identi!ed the pervasive nature of traditional gen-dered expectations in their families, schools and in society at large, while alsoexpressing a desire to defy these stereotypes and de!ne their own identities. Severalof them identi!ed explicitly as feminists or activists. These young women are in themidst of a major transition from being girls to being adult women, and negotiatingthe con"icting messages about being female.

A Grade Nine student whose family was originally from Sri Lanka, Mihika wasan outspoken critic of the hyper-sexualization of girls and women. As one exampleof this objecti!cation, Mihika shared a photograph of some telephones that she sawin her local mall that were shaped like headless women’s bodies (see Figure 2):

We saw something really disgusting and we were like: what the hell is this? It turnedout to be a phone. It was shaped as a female body and the head was cut off. It made

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me think about the objecti!cation of women and in society how we are always sur-rounded by pictures of females looking a certain way. There is no respect towards themand noone sees these images as people, they see them as objects. These norms in soci-ety actually have an impact on girls so when we see the images like that, they are seenas a normal telephones that guys will buy and will look at as a cool device. When wesee things like that as normal … we see ourselves in a certain way and it’s somethingthat we should !ght, but not all of us do.

Table 1. Summary of key themes from girls’ group analysis.

Meeting 1: all about me themes

(1) Self-concept(2) Adventure, travel and see the world

Meeting 2: all about gender themes

1. Traditional gender norms(a) Chores, cooking and cleaning – ‘Go make me a sandwich’(b) Extreme masculinity – ‘It’s men rebuilding what men destroyed’(c) Gendered patterns of participation – ‘Girls do activities, Boys do sports’

2. Resistance, resilience and de!ance3. Magazines, models and make-up

Meeting 3: all about citizenship themes

1. Pride, patriotism and spirit(a) Opportunities and access(b) Care for the environment and the natural world

2. Get informed, get involved and make a difference3. Celebrate diversity

Meeting 4: all about schooling themes

(1) School and civic participation(2) Hierarchy, social inequality and discrimination(3) Diversity and intersectionality(4) Empowerment and opportunities

Figure 2. Mihika’s image of telephones and a computer mouse shaped like headlesswomen’s bodies.

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Interestingly, most of the actual images they presented related to gender did notaddress gendered expectations in their own families speci!cally, even if they hadtalked about this issue in their individual interviews.

They also explicitly critiqued these notions, resisted them and de!ed them. Oneexample is Andrea’s photograph of rice and vegetables that she selected to critiquethese norms:

I think that cooking and food is unisex and I don’t see how it is supposed to be [associ-ated only] with women. Everybody needs food and everyone has to learn to take care ofthemselves. If a guy doesn’t get married, he can’t just eat cup of noodles every night.

The comments made by Andrea, Jane, Mihika and Priya show that they are resentfulof the unquestioned assumption that they as females will automatically takeresponsibility for cooking and household chores.

As with many of the other concepts we discussed, the participants displayed amultidimensional view of Canadian citizenship and national identity. The girlsadmitted to having some dif!culty with how to de!ne citizenship in the Canadiancontext. The girls often did so by comparing Canada with the United States or totheir parents’ countries of origin. They showed a strong belief within the group thatCanadian citizens must appreciate the myriad of opportunities they are granted:

Mihika: I still think being a Canadian, it’s really important to be thankful forwhere you are. My parents are Sri Lankan and if I were still there, Iwouldn’t have half the opportunities I do here.

Leigh-Anne: Like what?

Mihika: School, education, opportunities to volunteer, classes like being here!

At the same time, although perhaps less frequent, the girls also recognized theneed for citizens to lobby the government to address underlying societal inequalitiesand improve the lives of all citizens. They stressed the importance of individualcivic responsibility, sharing many examples of the volunteer work that they and theirpeers are involved in. Mihika is arguing that there is a need for citizens to advocateto their own government to expand rights and work towards greater equality in soci-ety. Andrea shared one image of a ‘shorikin’, which is a Japanese !ghting star, forour discussion of citizenship (see Figure 3): ‘I know this seems random’, Andreasays un-self-consciously, but ‘I wanted to show as a citizen, you often !nd yourself!ghting for your country, and sometimes you need to !ght against your country …[to] !ght about what you’re passionate about, to !ght against the government andlobby’. This seeming contradiction is not entirely surprising since it mirrors theongoing public debates about national identity and citizenship in Canada.

In our conversations about how citizenship was represented in their school expe-riences, the girls revealed their awareness of how education is both empowering anda means to a better life, as well as a hierarchical structure that reproduces societalinequalities. The group re"ected on the pressures they felt within the school contextof how to balance being themselves with !tting into the larger group and meetingthe expectations of teachers and their schools. In addition, the group commented onthe impact of teachers and administrators, discussing both innovative teachers and

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principals while at the same time discussing the impact of uncaring administrationthat prioritized school reputation over students.

Michelle, a Jamaican-Canadian girl who attended a suburban public school out-side the GTA, had strong feelings about some of the power issues in her school:‘My school is too concerned about keeping up the school image … there are toomany security cameras … and [the principal] doesn’t care about anyone unlessyou’re really smart or you’re a real trouble-maker’. It seemed that the girls whoattended more culturally diverse downtown schools had more positive impressionsof how their schools dealt with issues of diversity within the school context. It wasnot until I explicitly asked them to comment on their classroom experiences andcurriculum that they began to identify gaps and question what they were learning.

Interestingly, there was limited discussion about teachers, teaching and actualclassroom interactions and learning. In addition, although there was much discussionof issues of gender, race, sexuality, religion and geography, the interrogation ofissues of class and privilege was somewhat limited. In hindsight, I believe that wedid not suf!ciently explore in depth how class, religion and sexual orientationaffected the girls’ concepts and enactment of citizenship. In future work, this wouldbe an area for more in-depth exploration. Finally, the participants did not raise issuesrelated to school curriculum, school content or knowledge on their own until Iexplicitly started a discussion to solicit their critiques of school content.

Girls’ re!ections and recommendations: ‘we need more alternative narrativesand more critical literacy’I was interested in learning what gaps girls had themselves identi!ed in their owneducation – especially related to gender – and what suggestions they might have forimprovements. Their conversation revealed not only their own personal interests butalso their awareness of wider social issues, and included both general recommenda-tions to educators and policy-makers, and also speci!c activities and teaching strate-gies that they felt would improve students’ critical thinking skills.

Figure 3. Andrea’s ‘shorikin’, or Japanese !ghting star, to symbolize the complex andsometimes contradictory relationship of citizen to the state.

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The group discussed how gender stereotypes are prevalent in a lot of children’sbooks as well as in movies, especially those for younger children. ‘We need moreanti-princess education’, insisted Jane, initiating an animated discussion among thegirls about the need to create more spaces for students to critique and re"ect on gen-dered associations, expectations and roles. Throughout our meetings, the topic ofDisney and fairy-tales returned repeatedly. They had con"icted ideas about them,because on one hand they enjoyed these kinds of movies, but also discussed howstereotypical the gender roles were. The girls also felt that there needed to be muchmore critical literacy in general, especially in relation to the stories, fairy-tales andmedia to which young people are exposed in primary school:

In fairy tales they made it seem like the whole purpose of a girl’s life is to !nd herother self and get married and have children and then that’s the end of her life. You’resupposed to live until you’re twenty-!ve – that’s when you’re supposed to !nd yourtrue love and get married and never ever do anything again. (Andrea)

I think Disney is kind of screwing us all over. I was watching Toddlers and Tiaras2.These mothers said: ‘my daughter just loves it!’ Your daughter doesn’t speak yet. Theirdaughters have fake tans and they get their eyebrows waxed. Your daughter is two andshe has fake teeth and fake hair. This one girl said: ‘when I grow up I want to be aprincess at Disney that waves’. What kind of world are we preparing this world for? Ifour generation is bad, then all those younger than us are going to be worse! (Jane)

It was clear that these young women were easily able to identify these stereotypes,even while they admitted to watching the movies that perpetuated them. However,they did believe that schools needed to address this wave of media messaging moreaggressively in schools to help prepare girls and young women to be able to resistthe constant pressures from the media. They suggested a number of ways to promotecritical literacy; for example, activities where students could write alternative end-ings for fairy-tales, or imagine a variety of different possibilities for male and femalecharacters, going against the traditional gender norms. They also suggested havingstudents create new characters in their favourite stories, to identify what themes areusually missing from stories. Their discussion revealed their hunger for narratives,stories and examples of people who do not follow the dominant gender paradigms.They want more examples of strong girls as leaders as well as stories of boys beingallowed to be vulnerable.

Mihika showed an image of her young female cousin (see Figure 4) as anexample of girls contributing in unique ways to their community while servingsimultaneously as a symbol of strength: ‘It takes con!dence and strength to do thatand be yourself. I took a picture of my cousin who takes Tae Kwon Do. She took adifferent way to showing her con!dence and strength sharing herself with hercommunity’. She also included an example of a female member of the CanadianFederal Parliament, whom she met when she spoke at Parliament on behalf of aninternational advocacy campaign for girls’ rights. She said that she took it because:

I think every girl should grow up looking at images of women looking bold and happyand satis!ed, like Carolyn Bennett [a Canadian Member of Parliament], who is wear-ing bright colors and looks really happy and she looks satis!ed and happy to be whoshe is. I think when girls grow up seeing pictures of women like that, they kind of seethemselves growing up to be like that and that’s what we need more of.

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In addition to showing images of women that ran counter to female stereotypes,they also argued that boys also need images of men who are also different fromtraditionally masculine stereotypes. Priya shared a photograph of a male Member ofProvincial Parliament speaking at a podium. She chose it because although at !rstglance he appeared a symbol of traditional male authority:

This guys seems like the typical guy, he holds one of the key seats in government, heis a man of power, but it actually turned out that he was homosexual and he told usthe story of how he got there. He started to cry. I thought, wow! Men, you think theyget into power easily, but they have things to get over too, especially if they’re gay.

To Priya, this MP represented an alternative male role-model and revealed emotionalvulnerability in public, while still in a position of power. Thus, these girls stronglyargued that teachers and schools need to help young people identify dominantgender norms so they are able to critique them and envision new possibilities.

Secondary school: settlers, suffragettes and sex educationWhen shifting our discussion to the secondary curriculum, the group complainedabout the invisibility of women from much of their studies. Once again, the girls

Figure 4. Mihika’s image of her cousin doing Tae Kwon Do to show the possibility of girls’defying gender expectations of girls being ‘feminine’.

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discussed the exclusion of women’s lives from much of the curriculum, agreeingthat, for the most part, their exposure to explicit conversations about gender in theirschool experiences happened mostly in three areas: settlers, suffragettes and sexeducation. There was a sense that most spaces to talk about gender in the Canadiancontext were frozen in history, as if gender inequality had been solved in the distantpast, and is not an ongoing issue in Canada. This !nding is similar to other studiesexploring gender in the curriculum, which found limited spaces for engaging withgender in formal schooling (Sadker and Sadker 1994; Sadker and Silber 2007;Bickmore 1997; Hahn 1998).

The participants agreed that their school experiences were mostly focused on‘his-story’ and they argued strongly that students should also learn about ‘her-story’.The girls felt that often any discussion of gender in school had been limited to threemain places in their schooling. First, they remembered learning that women andmen had different roles in early Colonial or ‘settler’ times, among the !rst Englishand French peoples to live in Canada. The second place was when discussing theNorth American suffragette movement, where a select group of White womenfought for basic recognition of women’s rights. Most of the girls, except Macy,remembered talking about the Persons Case, when !ve Canadian women lobbied thefederal government to declare women as persons, distinct from their fathers and hus-bands. Schools, in their opinion, should include the lives and experiences of women,beyond the ‘Famous Five’,3 and the !ght for women’s voting rights.

The third space where they remember discussing gender explicitly was in sexeducation. These girls wanted conversations about gender to go beyond what theysaw as a kind of ‘birth control and biology’ approach to sex education. Michelletalked about how her teacher began a discussion by asking the girls the followingquestion: ‘Would you rather be a prude or a slut, because good girls are prudes’.This comment generated a "urry of conversation and expression of shock from thegirls, who seemed horri!ed and angry. Jane talked about how her sex education wasmostly ‘don’t get pregnant lessons’. They felt that these comments symbolized thepatronizing attitude of schools and adults in authority to the idea of girls learningabout sex, especially the two girls who attend religious-based schools. It was clearto me that these girls longed to have more frank conversations about sexuality andrelationships, so they could learn to navigate intimate and other relationships thatare governed by power. They wanted to learn how to assert themselves and commu-nicate their needs directly without fear of being punished for being unfeminine.

Mihika and Priya argued that students should learn about the multiple waves ofthe feminist movements and should link discussions of feminism to other issuessuch as religion and sexuality. In addition, they viewed gender ‘inter-sectionally’and in a global context, and talked about their desire to learn how gender roles varyacross cultures, countries and religions (Crenshaw 1993). Finally, they arguedconvincingly that teachers should be more prepared to connect curriculum to currentissues facing real women in Canada and around the world.

Re!ections on the inquiry process: bene"ts and challengesThe methodological approach was intended to create a space where girls couldrepresent their own lives, become participant-researchers through the process, andrecognize their own active citizen engagement. Despite involving them in the datacollection, analysis and representation phases of the research, this study may be

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more accurately described as ‘participatory action research-lite’, because the groupof young women did not develop the research protocols (Sirin and Fine 2011). Infuture projects, however, it might deepen the !ndings further to develop the researchquestions in collaboration with the participants as well.

In addition to challenges when developing the research design, other issues sur-faced related to employing a collaborative, critical and visually informed approach,which I will now discuss. As McClelland and Fine (2008) conceded, there can bechallenges when conducting collaborative research with youth, but the rewards canbe signi!cant. This process depended on a prolonged engagement with a group ofparticipants, and, perhaps not surprisingly, scheduling and transportation proved tobe the greatest obstacles. In particular, it proved dif!cult to carve out large chunksof time for our group meetings because the participants belonged to a variety ofclubs, sports, volunteer work and school activities. Moreover, because the groupwas scattered around the GTA, transportation also posed a dif!culty for many partic-ipants, some of whom had to travel for two hours to attend meetings or joined thegroup via video-chat. In spite of these issues, the group of seven girls who beganthe study in the fall of 2010 collected between 30 and 40 images each and became acohesive, supportive and committed group of participant-researcher-activists. Analy-ses reveal that the girls gained a sense of agency by having a space to share withlike-minded girls and analyse how their own lives are shaped by larger social forcesand what to do about it.

Participant re!ections on processUsing a critical, collaborative and creative methodology process shows potential forengaging young people in critical self-re"ection and connecting their individual per-spectives to larger-scale, complex social issues and structures of power. A somewhatsoft-spoken young woman with glasses, Priya may not appear the most obviousactivist girl, but she shared how her interest in social justice made her unique amongher high school peers: ‘I always talked about human rights in high school. But therewere no avenues to explore it. I always talk about it with my friends and they thinkI am nuts’. Mihika also talked about how her passion for equity issues and herdesire to speak out differentiated her from a lot of her peers:

A lot of the ninth grade students are afraid to voice their opinion. But if there’s any-thing that I think is wrong, I will speak up and say this needs to be changed. [Otherninth grade kids] are not like that. I get involved and I do a lot of events. When I dostuff with environmental club, people are always shocked that I’m in grade 9 becauseI’m always there with grade 12 students.

Jane is a White girl from a middle-class family of English and Croatian descent whohas been in Canada for several generations and who attends a private religiousschool in the GTA. Her parents are both professionals and her mother works in pub-lic health in Ontario. Jane also described how her interest in local and global issuesof justice started very early in her life and was in"uenced by her upbringing. As theonly White girl of European background, she was the only participant who did nothave close family connections to other countries:

I don’t know, I’ve always been pretty sensitive, I’d say, to that stuff. I was de!nitelyraised to be aware of that. I kind of want to stir the pot and look at the more controver-

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sial things. And I don’t know if people are more afraid of that but that is normallywhat gets me going and what gets me talking and sharing an opinion and trying to per-suade other people to actually believe these things.

These comments were typical of the girls’ comments in this group, many of whomshowed an early curiosity about other cultures as well as a strong belief in the equal-ity of all people around the globe, as well as the need to address existing societalinjustices.

The use of a collaborative research process built on the inherent proclivities ofthe participants in my study and also developed a strong sense of collective identity.Michelle, a somewhat shy girl of Jamaican origin, talked about her experiences ofgoing to a mostly White middle-class school in the suburbs. Her stories seemed togalvanize the other participants. She talked about a mural in her school that shedescribed as racist; the other girls in the group reacted very strongly, encouragingher to speak up in school and raise her concerns with the school administration. Thiskind of support and encouragement became a regular part of our group meetings.Furthermore, their participation in the process also seemed to have a signi!cantimpact on the girls and their sense of self as citizens, activists and leaders. Mihikadescribed the group in the following way:

We’re very similar to one another. We all have strong beliefs. We’re very differentfrom other girls our age. Over here we feel like we’re normal, but when I’m in schooland I’m talking about feminism or things around the world. People just don’t care, or[they say]: ‘Oh my God, you’re the feminist chick’.

As a conclusion to the project, I had the participants write personal re"ectionson what they had learned and achieved through this process. Their answers revealeda variety of motivations for joining: ‘seeing issues that need to be addressed in mycommunity’, ‘wanting to analyze my role in society’ and ‘needing an outlet for myvoice’. Priya, a !rst-year university student, talked about some of the tensions aris-ing between her and her mother, who had moved to Canada before Priya was born.Her mother had previously told Priya she was expected to get married by the age of25. Priya admitted:

I needed an outlet to discuss the issues that plague me as a woman in Canada. I wantedto voice my opinions on the barriers that are imposed on females, an issue no one Iknew seemed to care about.

Priya shared the tension she felt at trying to de!ne her own identity while resistingthe considerable pressures to conform to traditional ideas of femininity (seeFigure 1). For example, she talked about choosing to wear sneakers because theyare not associated with being masculine or feminine while still being considered‘cool’ by her peers. In addition, the girls talked about the rarity of similar spaceswhere a group of young women can get together, provide support for each other,validate their perspectives and re"ect on their lives as young, female citizens.

In every meeting, the girls were able to speak about dif!cult issues they faced intheir families, schools and communities and help each other navigate them,providing advice about the complex web of messages they received as young femalecitizens. As Janice so aptly described it:

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If anybody joined us for the updating session, he/she wouldn’t believe how incrediblethe other girls are! For every updating session, there was always something amazing thatwas going on in these girls’ lives. In just two short weeks there was always one girl thatdid something amazing after each meeting. From this, I saw how motivated Project Citi-zen-girls are. I have to say, the other girls accomplished so much within these !ve to sixmonths of meetings and you can’t !nd that in just any high school student. I feel likethe updating session is a mini-celebration of the achievements within two short weeks.

In a way, the research process allowed girls to share photographs and talk aboutproblems at school, but also provided a space for them to listen to each other’s suc-cesses and concerns. Somehow, it functioned also as a sort of celebration of thesegirls and their lives, validating their roles as active citizens and their contributions totheir communities. In one meeting, Priya shared an image (Figure 5) that capturedtheir sense of hope and their desire to carve out their own paths in life and not beforced into a traditional role. To her, the author of this story:

symbolizes a true independent woman who is not afraid to go after what she wants. Sheis breaking free of what her friends, and society, expects so she can pursue her owndreams and truly !nd who she is. It is a journey every woman should take. (Priya)

Implications: understanding ‘catalytic validity’While it is dif!cult to attribute this activism directly to their participation in thisstudy, it is apparent that the space created by the collaboration of a group of highlycurious young women impacted the lives of both the participants and the researcherin a profound way. This activity can be characterized as demonstrating catalyticvalidity (Lather 1986). The many examples of the participants’ individual andcollective social action discussed above illustrate how using participatory methodol-

Figure 5. Priya’s image of the book Eat, Pray, Love to symbolize the idea of a womande!ning her own path in life, regardless of traditional gender expectations.

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ogies not only gleans valuable research !ndings, but can also lead to social actionby the research participants.

Over the course of the research process, the girls began to develop trust and astrong sense of group identity, even calling themselves the ‘citizen-girls’ and refer-ring to the study as ‘Project Citizen-girl’. Near the end of our work, one participantcreated a web page for the group to keep in touch, share videos and continue to col-laborate after the of!cial process was completed. Similar to other research that hasused Photovoice, the process appeared to affect the girls’ overall con!dence andenthusiasm (Virgi and Mitchell 2011, 52). They were able to build social compe-tency, reaf!rm their own strengths and develop their understanding and knowledgeof gender equality in Canada (Virgi and Mitchell 2011, 44).

The other bene!t of using a collaborative process inspired by critical pedagogywas that the participants were also able to get beyond their own individual experi-ences and understand how systemic issues reinforced inequalities related to gender,race and culture. Too often in our neo-liberal climate of commercialization, hyper-sexualization and individualization (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2012), girls and youngwomen internalize the toxic media messages and conclude that their insecurities orchallenges are due to personal or individual issues, as opposed to being a reaction tothe larger society. In addition, since the language of female empowerment has beencoopted and constrained by neo-liberalism and the corporate media, feministactivities have frequently been reduced to self-esteem building and individualnotions of activism and citizen participation (Fraser 2013). Being part of this groupand engaging with larger societal issues allowed these young women to draw sup-port from each other and gain a sense of both individual and collective agency towithstand larger social pressures.

Research methodologies like Photovoice are being adopted more frequently todevise more democratic approaches to scholarly inquiry in !elds as wide ranging asanthropology, sociology and public health. Researchers are employing participatoryvisual methodologies to conduct needs assessments (Wang 1999), analyse publichealth issues (Minkler and Wallerstein 2008), and examine the experience of dealingwith medical conditions, such as Lorenz’s (2010) powerful study of traumatic braininjury survivors. This growing use of such methods is perhaps a testament to theirsuccess in not only gleaning important !ndings, but also re-envisioning the researchprocess and developing more democratic relationships with participants andcommunities.

The collaborative and creative process seemed to bolster the participants’ senseof initiative and activism, and also encouraged them to envision future goals andopportunities. During one of our conversations, Janice shared an opportunity shehad found to attend a girls’ leadership summit in Washington, DC and encouragedother girls to apply. Two participants attended the summit, which introduced them toa number of congresswomen, senators, ambassadors and other prominent women.Another girl, Jane, spent the summer volunteering with a non-governmental organi-zation in Kenya, while Priya decided to change her university major from life sci-ence to anthropology and equity studies. The girls who participated in ‘ProjectCitizen-girl’ also became a group of advocates, accompanying me at a variety ofworkshops and presentations at conferences, schools, teacher development eventsand in the teacher education programme at the University of Toronto. Finally, thephotography exhibit held at the University of Toronto attracted the attention of a

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foundation, which led to a subsequent project to promote girls’ civic engagementusing !lmmaking instead of photography.

Conclusion

It is important to engage girls in a dialogue in order to understand their perspectives onthe challenges they face on a daily basis. The second step is to develop a space forthem to re"ect critically on their lives (present and future) and to offer their ideas forsolutions. (Virgi and Mitchell 2011, 43)

It must be acknowledged that the camera (be it still photography or video) has had along gendered, racialized and colonial history, governed by unequal power relationsbetween photographer and subject (Gallagher and Kim 2008). In addition, camerashave been and are still used to treat women as passive objects of heterosexual maledesire as well as to perform surveillance and use youth to sell goods. Despite thistradition of using the camera to objectify and dehumanize, it has also been used forpurposes of social justice and to document societal inequalities. The girls’ re"ectionson their learning suggest that participating in an inquiry process that provided spacefor the girls to critically re"ect, share their lives and validate their concerns andaccomplishments did seem to show a positive effect on the girls’ self-concepts, senseof agency and self-con!dence. With the girls directing the camera’s lens, and havingthe space to share their experiences, perspectives and opinions, the collaborative,visually informed research process served to validate the participants and their rolesas citizens, participants, researchers and activists.

Notes1. Mihika is a name chosen by one of the participants as her pseudonym for the project. All

of the participants chose a pseudonym for themselves that was also supposed to bere"ective of their cultural background.

2. Toddlers and Tiaras is a popular American television show that follows very young girlswho are contestants in beauty pageants.

3. This term refers to the !ve Canadian women (Emily Murphy, Irene Marryat Parlby,Nellie Mooney McClung, Louise Crummy McKinney, Henrietta Muir Edward) who wentto the Supreme Court of Canada to have women recognized within Canadian society as‘persons’.

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