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Increasingly, researchers and policymakers recognize the ability of girls to effect social change in their daily lives. Scholars working across diverse settings also acknowledge the key influence of individual, family, and societal structures on such activism. Drawing on our work with girls in a participatory visual research project in a rural community in South Africa, we consider examples of partnership and collaboration between the adult research team and the young participants. We highlight their agency in mobilizing adults to partner and support community and policy change to address traditional practices of early and forced marriage in this setting. We conclude that collaborative engagement with adults as partners can support activism and advocacy led by girls in contexts of traditional leadership.

Characterized by a highly complex and segmented decision-making structure and strong conventions and values, German higher education was long considered impervious to significant change. In recent years, several initiatives demonstrate both the resistance to, and prospects for, profound reforms. This article focuses on two such endeavors: the establishment of junior professorships and the introduction of general tuition fees. Both policies aim to break ironclad traditions—in the first case, the entry qualification for professorships; in the second, the principle of free education. The discourse surrounding the establishment of these initiatives has emphasized performance and competition. The new advocacy coalitions and their opponents, however, use different frames to interpret these terms. The battle of ideas and policies regarding a reconfigured academic hierarchy has been shaped by stakeholders in the scientific community, with political actors taking a secondary role. On the other hand, the discourse surrounding the introduction of tuition fees reverses this order, with political actors taking the prominent role. Discourse patterns and involvement of political parties matter. The analysis reveals the competing rhetorical and policy frames that support policy diversity. Policy change adds to, rather than eliminates, existing structures.

Lyn Mikel Brown gives an autobiographical account of her shift in focus from studying girls and theorizing girls and girlhood to working as an activist and advocate for and with girls. Specifically she describes the Maine-based nonprofit organization called Hardy Girls Healthy Women (www.hghw.org) that she founded in 2000. She situates her current praxis historically in the light of her groundbreaking work with Carol Gilligan at the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development in the 1980s and early 1990s. This work did indeed put the "girls" into Girls' Studies.

Girl Scouts of the USA is the largest organization for girls in the world, with 2.8 million members and more than 50 million American women as alumnae since the first troop was organized in 1912. Although the organization's mission statement has evolved over the years, Girl Scouts has always been focused on training girls to be responsible and resourceful citizens, and, for the past ten years, there has been a renewed focus on leadership development and the empowerment of girls. Through content analysis of the National Leadership Journey books for each program level of Girl Scouting, I explore three specific themes that are emphasized in this new curriculum. Since National Leadership Journey books are now part of the Girl Scout experience from elementary to high school, these messages concerning leadership development could have an impact on millions of girls across the United States.

Neglected tropical diseases show how a disease group can be formed to compete in the global health policy marketplace. The naming and branding of a new disease category is used to organize activities, direct attention and resources, and rationalize the governance of diseases. The politics of classification involves processes of negotiation and conceptual development by key actors. Here, discussions about central characteristics, naming, and inclusion and exclusion criteria are rarely settled. Contradictions are present in the “tropical” and “neglected” characterizations, as well as choices of universalist rather than particularist approaches. Interacting with these considerations is a continued progression in means of dealing with disease from health actors and changing attributes of diseases in populations.