The Girl Effect tells the story of how and why U.S. transnational corporations are investing in poor, racialized girls and women in the Global South as a solution to ending poverty in the pursuit of economic growth. This book fundamentally departs from the prominent individuals and institutions that promote this logic of development. Through a multi-sited ethnography in powerful institutions, including Nike Inc., the Nike Foundation, the World Bank, the Clinton Global Initiative, and international nongovernmental organizations, this book draws on over a decade of research in the United States ... More

The Girl Effect tells the story of how and why U.S. transnational corporations are investing in poor, racialized girls and women in the Global South as a solution to ending poverty in the pursuit of economic growth. This book fundamentally departs from the prominent individuals and institutions that promote this logic of development. Through a multi-sited ethnography in powerful institutions, including Nike Inc., the Nike Foundation, the World Bank, the Clinton Global Initiative, and international nongovernmental organizations, this book draws on over a decade of research in the United States and Brazil to understand how these corporatized development practices simultaneously position girls and women as instruments of poverty alleviation and as new frontiers for capitalist accumulation. Its ethnographic insights demonstrate how diverse, unequally resourced actors negotiate corporatized development, and reveal its intended and unintended effects for girls and corporations. Moeller illuminates how corporations, in partnership with liberal feminists and development experts, have sought to free capitalism from the constraints of gender inequality without fundamentally transforming the lives of the girls and women that they claim to serve. She concludes that these development practices enable corporations to expand their legitimacy, authority, and reach, while depoliticizing girls’ and women’s demands for a fair global economy.