This research zine is a creative essay about feminist daughterhood based on my dissertation research with activist girls and their mothers and mother figures. I chose to centre my analysis on the relationships between activist girls and their mothers and mother figures because mother-daughter relationships are not well explored in the field of girls’ studies. Girls inherit the social problems they seek to resolve with their activism, which means they inherit longstanding political struggles, in part, from their mothers. By using daughterhood as the locus of connections between girls’ political participation and family relationships, I look to centre girls as people inhabiting a unique social location at the intersection of their age and gender, but without isolating them and disconnecting their political activism from their family and community contexts. This zine explores these contextual layers of relationships, home life, and political participation by combining analysis and interview excerpts with photographs of a home and political protests blended together.
Author Biography
Hannah Maitland is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies Department at York University. She is a feminist researcher who studies girl activists, their politics, and their relationships with their mothers and mother figures. Her other research areas include sex education controversies and pregnant Barbie dolls. Beyond her research, Hannah co-founded the Open Digital Literacy and Access Network (ODLAN). She currently serves as the Recording Secretary for the Sexuality Studies Association and the Women, Gender, and Social Justice Association. You can find some of her writing in Sex Education, Atlantis, The Conversation, and #Barbie and Social Media: Digital Discourses and Mattel’s Celebrity Doll.