Girls-in-a-box: Are you guiding your daughters towards greatness or mediocrity?

A girlfriend of mine has a daughter, a very smart daughter, who is a freshman at a high school in Orem, a very conservative community.   Her female teacher asked her to write a paper about where she’d be in five years.  Being the intelligent and capable girl that she is, she wrote about her goals, including attending a good out-of- state university.  Her teacher gave her a low grade and wrote comments on her paper like: “What about getting married?”  “What about kids?”   When my friend recounted this story,  I couldn’t believe my ears.  In five years this girl will be only 19! My friend then explained how she went in to talk to the principal and the principal explained that they wanted their students to set more “realistic goals” for themselves, explaining that only about 2% of their students actually go to school out of state. Way to teach your kids to shoot for the stars!  Not only is this school guiding their students toward a life of mediocrity, they are perpetuating a very sexist view that women are most valuable when they are barefoot and pregnant.

We live in a more progressive community, but even my daughter faces gender-stereotyping in her community.  She was very excited about career day at her school.  She enjoyed it, but being the perceptive girl she is recounted this: “Mom, it was fun, but you know how they had a bunch of successful people speak to us?  Well, I noticed how all of them were men.” Yes, she goes to a school where they speak about gender equality, but when it comes down to it, they don’t practice what they teach. 

Perhaps it’s the community I live in, but even in this day and age,  instead of being rewarded for being smart and having big dreams, girls are rewarded most by society and their peers for being pretty and attracting attention from boys. As a mother of three girls, this concerns me. Actually, it more than concerns me, it frustrates me to no end.  I can teach my daughters to be intelligent and capable people who can do great things with their life, yet when they go out into the world they are measured by how pretty they are and how many dates they can secure for the weekend.  Is this what we want them to aspire to? This mentality will ultimately only lead them to a life of mediocrity and perpetuates the idea that women need a man to be fulfilled.  

As a mother,  I appreciate the wonder and amazement that comes from having and raising children,  but as a woman,  I also know that is not all my gender is destined for.  Like men, women are talented, capable beings that can accomplish great things with their life and better the world.  The problem is as women, we are still bound by a society that sees us as wives and mothers first, confining us to a box and all it’s limitations.  

As a society we need to be mindful of the messages we are putting out there. Applaud your daughter for being pretty if you want to, but applaud her equally for getting good grades, having strong opinions, and having big dreams.  And then,  enable her success as you enable her beauty when you buy her make-up and nice clothes-  give her books,  spend time helping her develop long-term goals that involve an education and  encourage her to go after fulfilling herself.  She may still choose to be a mother or maybe she'll choose to be a presidential candidate-  but give her a choice and a voice in her own life by providing her with a full range of life options instead of only a few. 

Next, take this vantage point out into the world with you.  Don’t engage in gender stereotypes and don’t perpetuate them by supporting people who do. Raise your voice when movies and TV shows (most screenplays & TV scripts are written by men, Benchmarking Women's Leadership Study, 2011) create weak, emotionally insolvent characters that are dependent on men. Raise your voice when magazines write articles about being pretty instead of being smart, raise your voice when your children’s schools teach them to shoot for the home rather than the moon, and raise your voice when your neighbors and friends hold women to narrowly defined standards.

Whether is overt gender-typing as with my friends daughter or the more subtler gender bias my daughter experienced,  the fact remains that our daughters are being guided towards mediocrity by their schools, their communities, their churches, the media and in many cases, their well-meaning parents that don’t even realize they are doing it. It is time for this to change, and to change in more than words, but in attitude and action. Your daughters deserve the opportunity to define their own life rather than have it forced upon them.