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What's Important to Girls and What Parents Can Do to Make a Difference
By Renee Spencer, LILSW
SIX SPECIAL RISKS FOR GIRLS
There are special risks for girls in adolescence, above and beyond those faced by boys.
1) The first is gender role socialization that begins in middle school.
The researchers found that for girls, the process of becoming a woman
is one of becoming who someone else thinks they should be, rather than
who they really are.
It is during this middle school time, when all children are searching
desperately for who they are and how they fit in, that girls first become
aware that they live in a culture that values what is male more than what
is female. Boys become the players. Girls become the cheerleaders. Girls
get to be the serving wenches or the rescued princesses in the Renaissance
Festival...boys play the nobles and the knights.
Girls are faced with becoming a woman in a culture that handles differences
by ranking -- if two things are different, which is better? Our culture values
the characteristics which we have ascribed to men, and devalues those ascribed
to women. For proof, just ask a group of older children to list adjectives
for masculine and feminine. With masculine you get "strong, powerful, leader,
macho, good fighter, and the like." With feminine, you get "soft, weak, sweet,
dependent, helpless, etc." Girls in adolescence begin to know this. They
recognize that who they are -- how they were born -- is not valued as highly
as their male classmates.
Orenstein observed a California classroom in which girls and boys were asked to
imagine how their lives would be different if they had been born the opposite sex.
She reports the following responses: The boys answers focused on "have tos": "I'd
have to spend a lot of time in the bathroom on my hair." "I'd have to help my mom cook."
"I'd have to stand around at recess instead of getting to play basketball." "I'd worry
about getting pregnant."
The girls' answers longingly focused on what they would gain. "I'd have my own room."
"I could stay out later." "I'd get to play a lot more sports. "I wouldn't care how I
looked or if my clothes matched." (Orenstein, p. x.v)
In other words, being a girl is viewed as a liability.
What is being a girl? For decades, psychological research, aimed at establishing what
is "normal" for human beings, have based their conclusions on studies of young, upper-class males attending Ivy League schools. It is only recently, with Gilligan and others, that psychologists have studied women in order to find what is normal for women. What they have found is that women are different psychologically than men. They view the world differently. They approach the world differently.
For example, women tend to be relationship-oriented. Relationships are critical to girls
and women. Women tend to be collaborative, rather than competitive. For decades, however, psychologists have classified dependency on relationships as a character disorder. It's called "dependent personality disorder," which pathologizes dependence on others, their opinions, their reassurances, their support. But there is no "independent personality disorder". What is normal for many women, then, has been considered "abnormal" by traditional standards of mental health developed from the male model. (M. Kaplan (1983) "A Woman's View of DSM III," American psychologist 38, 786-792)
Another interesting finding by Carol Gilligan came as a result of asking groups of boys
and groups of girls to respond to a word problem involving ethics. The problem was this: "If a man's wife is dying, and the pharmacy has the only drug that can save her, but the drug is too expensive, should the man steal the drug?" Boys' answers focused on the rightness or wrongness of stealing the drug. It was obvious that boys tended to hear the question as "Should the man steal the drug?" Girls, on the other hand, focused their answers on other ways to approach the problem. Maybe the man could borrow the money from the bank, or negotiate a payment with the pharmacist. It was apparent the girls heard the question as "Should the man steal the drug?" Gilligan called the two responses the "ethic of justice" for the boys, versus, the "ethic of caring," for the girls. Is one better than the other? No. Are they different, yes. Can the world exist without both. No. (In a Different Voice, Gilligan 1992).
If we accept that girls are more relational and focused on relationships and relationship
tending, you can see how this puts them in a dilemma when it comes to the double standards
that they see in school and in life. Girls are concerned about inclusion of boys, but boys often do not return this concern about girls. As girls see that the culture values independence, they assume that their relational perspective is flawed, and they, too, begin to devalue it.
2) A second special risk for girls is their education within a system which focuses primarily on the experience and achievements of boys and men.
In textbooks, only 1/7th of the illustrations of children are girls.
More of the activities in classrooms appeal to boys.
Girls are exposed to three times as many boy-centered stories as girl-centered stories.
Boys tend to be portrayed as clever, brave, resourceful, creative. Girls as kind, dependent and docile. Girls read six times as many biographies of males as females. Even in animal stories, the animals are twice as likely to be male. (Pipher, p.62)
3) A third risk is that girls receive less time and attention in the classroom.
In well-documented studies by David and Myra Sadker of American University, and by
the AAUW, researchers found that in the classroom, boys are twice as likely to be seen as role models, five times as likely to receive teachers' attention and 12 times as likely to speak up in class. (Sadker and Sadker, Year 3: Final Report to the NEA, 1984)
Boys receive more classroom attention and more detailed instructions than girls. They are
called on more often than girls, and are asked more complex questions. Boys are more likely to be praised for academics and intellectual work, while girls are more likely to be praised for their clothing, behaving properly, and obeying rules. Boys are more likely to be criticized for their behavior, while girls are criticized for their intellectual inadequacy (Pipher, p. 62-63)
4) A fourth risk is our society's overemphasis on appearance and underemphasis on ability. The term "lookism" has been coined to describe this bias based on appearance.
We have eating disorders of a proportion unknown in any other time or in any other culture in the world. Currently, it is estimated that 20% of all girls will experience a serious eating problem by the time they are in their early 20s. The figure is higher among white, upper middle-class girls, although it is growing among middle class girls of all racial and ethnic backgrounds (J.A. Graber, Columbia University study, 1996)
The statistics for depression are worse. It is estimated that 35 percent of all adolescent girls now experience a period of serious depression. From 7 to 10 percent of all adolescent girls will experience
a major depressive episode, twice the rate for boys. (J.A. Graber, Columbia University study, 1996) Our culture sets girls up for the unattainable, which sets them up for failure: The average model, dancer or actress is thinner than 95% of the female population. (Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 185)
Models featured in fashion magazines weigh 23% less than the average woman.
(Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 192)
Put another way, the average fashion model is 5'11" tall and weighs 117 lbs. The average woman in America is 5'4" and weighs 144 lbs. (Hilliary Carlip, Girl Power: Young Women Speak Out)
The shape of a girl before she enters puberty is the image that society says is beautiful.
Normal puberty adds an average of 24 pounds to weight, important re-shaping for child bearing. Leg length as a proportion of total height actually decreases. (Hilliary Carlip, Girl Power: Young Women Speak Out)
So when we say to girls -- you are valued primarily on your appearance, and we are going to set a standard of appearance that is, for most, unattainable, and for all practical purposes, out of your control, what we get is:
One in four fourth grade girls rate themselves as the least attractive girl in the class. (Riva Freedman, Bodylove, p. 25)
53% of 13-year-olds say their are already unhappy with their bodies. This jumps to 78% by age 18. (Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 185)
74% of women aged 18-35 believe they are fat. (Naomi Wolf , The Beauty Myth, p. 185)
5) This emphasis on appearance teaches girls to look outward for markers of acceptability. This makes them extremely vulnerable to what others think, feel and desire. It is at the middle school age that girls stop asking themselves, "Who am I?" "What do I want?" and start thinking, "What do I have to do to please others?" Girls' biggest fears at this age is to be alone -- not belong to a group, lose the approval of her peers. It is a time when girls' are at risk to losing the central part of themselves. Losing who they are.
6) Another special risk of girls in adolescence is sexual harassment.
Recent studies have shown that, in school, 76% of girls experience harassment, and 75% experience unwanted touching. One-third of all girls report sexual rumors being spread about them. One-fourth
of them report being cornered or molested. Classrooms and hallways of the schools are the most common sites for sexual harassment. (Hostile Hallways: the AAUW Survey on Sexual Harrassment in American Schools, by Louis Harris & Associates, 1993)
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