Young women's identities are an issue of public and academic interest across a number of western nations at the present time. This book explores how young women attending an elite school for girls understand and construct 'empowerment'. It investigates the extent to which, and the ways in which, their constructions of empowerment and identity work to overturn, or resist, key regulations and normative expectations for girls in post-feminist, hyper-sexualised cultural contexts.

The book provides a succinct overview of feminist theorisations of normative femininities in young women's...