ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Smart Economics is underpinned by human capital theory, and that the re-conceptualization of girls and women through human capital theory has been fundamental to their position in policy today. It provides a feminist critique of human capital theory, drawing on Foucault's engagement with the topic, to show the conceptual and practical implications of this discourse. The chapter argues that human capital theory has made girls and women legible as the most profitable and productive site for development interventions: it has permitted their recognition as development agents, but in such a way that prescribes their transformation into empowered entrepreneurs whose economic power can be harnessed in a global economy. Such a critique demonstrates that human capital produces new specifically gendered subjectivities that encompass techniques of management and control of girls and women, through the contention that their essential and intrinsic qualities must be activated and cultivated for full economic participation.
