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In the concluding chapter the editors of the volume take a conversational look into the producing process of Nordic Girlhoods: New Perspectives and Outlooks. The authors discuss key contemporary issues and future perspectives in Nordic girlhood studies and foreground the political relevance of the research field in the contemporary societal situation. They call for reflexive and critical theorizations on what counts as the Nordic, especially when the girl is to be found in the middle of several nationalistic desires and conservative political discourses.

In the Introduction, Bodil Formark, Heta Mulari and Myry Voipio discuss the history, key themes, and societal position of Nordic girlhood studies. They focus on the development of the research field in Nordic countries and pay special analytical attention to gender equality and the societal model known as the Nordic model. They also discuss femininity as a political issue in Nordic feminist politics and research and contemplate the specific academic and linguistic boundary conditions of doing Girlhood Studies in the Nordic countries.

This edited collection is an interdisciplinary and dialogical endeavor focused on the field of Nordic Girlhood Studies. It investigates young femininity as well as the key themes and concepts of Girlhood Studies, including girl power, feminisms, femininity, gender equality, postfeminism and sexualities in the specific cultural, historical and political context of the Nordic region. The chapters of the book consist of thematic case studies, including memories of girl power in the Finnish context, gendered harassment experienced and explained by Finnish girls, troublesome girlhood within the Swedish context and girls’ subjectification projects in Nordic welfare state. Further, the case studies are accompanied by dialogical Outlook-essays, where researchers either outside Nordic region or from adjacent research fields reflect on Nordic Girlhood Studies through comparisons and reflections form their vantage point. The book will be of scholarly interest to researchers and students working especially on the fields of Girlhood Studies, Youth Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology and Cultural Studies both within the Nordic region and outside.

This article analyzes young Swedish women’s experiences of living stressful femininity from an existentialist gender theoretical perspective. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 25 women, aged 17–25, who had registered for a stress management course at a youth health centre. Our analysis suggests that their experiences of stress can be related to the renegotiation of gender constructions that have occurred within the Swedish society. The young female subject can be viewed as living through a historic break between a historical position as a subordinated ‘Other’ while simultaneously having to navigate within contemporary discourses of successful femininity. The doing of normative femininity resulted in an exhausting and draining self-evaluating circle. The experiences of having a painful and collapsing body led to a sense of loss of access to and confidence in their bodies. This should be understood as a loss both of subjectivity and connectedness with the corporeality of existence.

Oh Boy Girls, What a Tangle! Historical Reflections on the Value of Girlhood Studies in a Girl-Friendly and Post-Feminist Time

Using the recent establishment of the International Day of the Girl Child as an analytical departure point this article addresses three different but intertwined challenges which Girlhood Studies are facing in relation to the contemporary construction of the girl as an important agent for social change. The construction of a historically significant girl represents a significant historical change, which requires further historical analysis and reflection. Seeking to untangle this temporal problem the article first discusses a number of problematic implications caused by the historiographical emphasis of the “invisibility of girls” within the research field. Furthermore, it discusses how this narrative of invisibility also has infused the ideals, norms and discourses among girlhood researchers. In the article I argue that this narrative represents a risk in relation to the current neo-liberal centering of the girl, as it might entail a tendency to approach all instances where the girl is noticed as a girl in an uncritical manner. The article then analyses how historians have framed the writing of the history of girls and girlhood. A project in which there seems to be an emancipatory ambition to affix a kind of eternal value to the girl, which can be viewed to be in correspondence with contemporary girl power discourses. The article thereafter discusses some historical aspects regarding the relationship between Girlhood Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies both in an international and in a Swedish context. I conclude the article by exemplifying how a more theoretical understanding of girls, girlhood and generation could be used as a framework in the investigation of the Nordic experience of forty years of gender equality politics.