Articulating a Framework for Safe/r Spaces with Young Women in Kenya
Overview
Using feminist approaches, I explore the relationship between safe/r spaces and young women’s civic participation in Kenya. Young women’s standpoints enable us to understand how young women are positioned in relation to institutions, structures, and resources and, in turn, how those relations shape their lives. Using this approach, for example, we can interrogate how power works in concert with institutions to hinder – and/or enhance – young women’s access to safe/r spaces. In this article, I present a framework for safe/r spaces demonstrating how this framework provides an opportunity to work towards freedoms for young women. I also complicate safe/r spaces, arguing that their qualities as paradoxical and productive spaces present immense liberatory possibilities for young women. Importantly, I showcase various strategies that young women use to activate, claim, and cultivate safe/r spaces. I conclude by considering how this reading of safe/r spaces might inform a more meaningful, transformative, and equitable civic participation for young women.
Additional details
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2024.2357503ISBN
1355-2074How to cite this resource
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