Using Postcolonial Feminism to Investigate Cultural Difference and Neoliberalism in Sport, Gender and Development Programming in Uganda

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the utility of a postcolonial feminist girlhood studies approach to investigate, and better understand, how corporate-funded sport, gender and development (SGD) programs that adhere to the “Girl Effect” mantra take up: (1) the alleged benefits of SGD programming; (2) its (embodied) neoliberal tendencies; and (3) issues around gender and cultural difference in North-South aid relations.

This study uses qualitative methods, including 35 semi-structured interviews with staff members and young women, in order to investigate how a SGD program in Eastern Uganda that is funded by a Sport Transnational Corporation (STNC) and an International NGO used martial arts to build girls’ self-defense skills and address gender-based, sexual, and domestic violence.

Three major findings are revealed, including: (1) the martial arts program improved young women’s confidence levels, physical fitness, leadership capabilities, and social networks; (2) Western donors tended to use and frame sport (i.e., martial arts) as paramount for educating and training Ugandan young women to be (neoliberal) global “girl” citizens; and (3) issues of representation, racialized subjectivity, and cultural difference in SGD adversely influenced aid relations.

Evidence from this chapter suggests that it is crucial to question how global neoliberal development, as promoted via SGD practices, is not only racialized and classed, but also distinctly gendered. Infusing girlhood studies with a postcolonial feminist perspective enables a deconstruction, and attendance to, the ways in which colonial legacies, neoliberal processes, and the political resistance of development practices are taken up, and impelled by, SGD programs.