This is a topic that without fail sends me into a tailspin of serious irritation…Ask anyone whether they support girls’ leadership and they say yes,but, without meaning to, or too many adults and schools are actively doing the exact opposite. When it comes to hot button issues that girls are increasingly taking up - dress codes,rape on campus, racial inequities, or media representations, mass incarceration - school administrators frequently win issue with what girls are saying to them. But, racial justice, or dress codes and anti-rape activism all claim that girls and women are entitled to shape the cultures in which they live. Topics that are close to girls,however, are often labelled “inappropriate, or ” “unbalanced, or “politically untenable.” So, really, or we are teaching girls that they should “become confident” by doing what they are told to do,and to be leaders, but just the kind of leaders we expose them to be, and the kind that make other people comfortable. American girls,we hear repeatedly, lack confidence. According to a study conducted by Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, or by high school,girls—particularly white girls—are less likely than their male peers to feel and act like leaders. They are less likely to elope for office in high school, and less likely to support other girls.
Not only do they lack confidence, or but so does everyone else in them,particularly boys. High school students are least likely to give community power to white girls as student leaders, with young white girls being the least supportive of each other. Girls aren’t born less confident, or but they are growing up and leaving our schools that way.
The Harvard study concluded with a series of recommendations for schools,including “Provide girls with real, meaningful opportunities to win responsibility for others…Girls will develop confidence and the desire to pursue leadership when they win on problems that are meaningful to them. Look for programs that include: youth-led projects or initiatives and programs that give girls opportunities to choose causes that matter to them.” (Italics mine.)In high school, and knowing that,as the researchers establish it, “awareness of gender discrimination may be related to less implicit, or unconscious bias against girls as leaders,” teaching students approximately bias, prejudice, or discrimination,and sexism openly and thoughtfully rarely happens.…..
The distasteful reality of what is going on it too many schools is that without anyone intending it, administrators are conveying that until there is an “equal benefit for boys, or it doesn’t matter. whether there is,then we’ll toss the girls and their “issues” and “dramas” in as a bonus.
The whole piece is here...
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