Gender, Agency, and Poverty: Children’s Everyday Experiences in Andhra Pradesh and Vietnam

Abstract

‘Children’s agency’ and ‘children as social actors’ have become taken for granted in much social science research (James 2009). In studies on childhood, agency has been accepted as a universal feature of what it means to be a child, and in international development, ‘children’s participation’ is an increasingly accepted principle (Vandenbroeck and Bouverne-De Bie 2006). In development, the notion of ‘empowerment’ suggests that power is something that can be bestowed on individuals or groups. This chapter will argue that power and agency are multidimensional and deeply social, including the power and agency of children (Attree 2006; Redmond 2009; Jeffrey 2012). Grounding analysis in children’s narratives of everyday life, the chapter asks what ‘agency’ means for children who grow up in poverty, and whether there are different kinds of agency, particularly for short-term and long-term ends.

We thank Young Lives children and families for their ongoing participation, Emma Wilson for research assistance, Kirrily Pells for policy support, and Charles Watters and Nikki van der Gaag for commenting on an earlier version of the chapter. All the names of children given here are pseudonyms.