GENaustin

Mobilizing Resources to Support Girls� Healthy Growth

GENaustin is based on Dr. Pipher's book," Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls." We help girls become "healthy resisters" through self awareness, body awareness, and learning specific coping skills.

GENaustin is made up of volunteers committed to helping girls grow into healthy, confident women who feel valued for what�s inside, and not outside, themselves. Our mission is to help adolescent girls develop and maintain healthy self-esteem by educating them, parents, teachers and others about cultural and media influences that seek to undermine girls� sense of self. We facilitate skill-building programs that empower girls to be true to themselves while advocating for positive change in the world.

We currently organize speakers� series in middle schools by recruiting experts from the therapy and education communities to make free public presentations dealing with various adolescent girl issues. We plan to offer at least one major girl-oriented community event in Austin per year, plus a variety of workshops, programs, retreats and conferences for parents, girls, and educators.

Since our inception, we have organized more than 70 speaker presentations in middle schools in the Austin, Eanes, and Round Rock school districts in Central Texas. We also have hosted three national speakers at major community events: former Gov. Ann Richards in 1996; Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, in 1997, and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., noted author and producer of "Killing Us Softly" and other videos, in 1998. NASA astronaut Lt. Col. Catherine "Cady" Coleman, recently returned from a space mission in July, was our main event speaker Nov. 5, 1999.

GENaustin is organized around research by educators and psychologists over the last 10 years that shows girls of all socio-economic levels experience a dramatic, and sometimes permanent, loss of self-esteem in the middle school years. Some of these findings:

A landmark study of adolescents by the AAUW showed the number of girls who strongly agree with the statement: "I like most things about myself" drops 31 points between elementary and high school.

The biggest drop is in perception of competence. Even girls who excel in math in elementary school are half as likely as boys by the time they enter high school to feel competent in them. This decline in perception of competence in middle school precedes by two years a real drop in performance.

While girls enter elementary school decidedly ahead academically, they leave high school significantly behind. On average, girls� SAT scores are 60 points below boys (lower in all areas). College continues the decline. Girls� score 127 points on average below boys on the Graduate Record Exam (GRE).

One in five girls will experience a serious eating disorder by their early 20s. The figure is even higher among white, upper-middle-class girls.

More than one-in-three girls experience a period of serious depression during adolescence -- and one in 10 will suffer a severe depressive episode.

By the time they are 18, 78 % of all girls say they are unhappy with their bodies.

Among the causes of these alarming statistics are rampant "lookism" promoted by the media and the culture, gender bias in the classroom and growing awareness among girls of gender stereotypes that devalue women. This loss of "self value" is at the core of epidemic rates of eating disorders, self-mutilations, depression, drug use and sexual acting out among teen girls, according to Dr. Pipher.

Pipher suggests the best way for families to fight pressures on their daughters to conform to unreal and unhealthy images of "female," is to help them become healthy "resisters." This is accomplished primarily through awareness of unhealthy media messages, self-awareness, body awareness and the learning of specific coping skills.

GENaustin is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by a group of concerned parents in Austin. We welcome volunteers and donations to help us carry on our work.

For more information, contact GENaustin by e-mail, or call us at (512) 851-8100.

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