Do you like the word “well-behaved”?
I hate it. Colloquially “well-behaved” means unproblematic, meek, but when we look deeper, we see that it means obedience, meekness and discipline, which are very convenient for adults, but harmful to children of both sexes. Politeness understood in this way limits, restrains and blocks.
The report “Future for girls”, which you have worked on for the Cosmos for Girls foundation, shows that girls constantly face stereotypes. And that being “well-behaved” is still expected of them. Stereotypes are still very strong.
You could get the impression that they are being strengthened even more. Stereotypes are strong because they are of interest to those who want to maintain the status quo. The binary division into boys and girls is very important for conservatives who do not want to hear about an open, diverse world.
There is no way any major change will occur if we, as a society, don’t empower girls.
What kind of girl stereotypes did you encounter while preparing the report?
We have a stereotype of being polite and diligent – in theory, teachers require all students to behave appropriately in class, in practice both teachers and parents expect girls to be more polite and more diligent than boys.
There is also a stereotype of a diligent girl, but less intelligent than boys. It says that girls learn well, but they owe it to their hard work, not their innate intelligence.
Of course, the stereotype that girls are worse at maths is still firmly held. In one study, fathers were asked to estimate the level of mathematical intelligence of their children. Fathers of sons averaged 110, while fathers of daughters averaged 98. Mothers are also affected by this stereotype. The saddest thing is that we trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy: not just parents and teachers, but also girls themselves, are convinced so much that mathematics is not their forte, that they have less fun learning it, they give up earlier.
The experts I spoke to said that mathematics is a field in which making mistakes is essential to learn it. But girls, due to the pursuit of perfection, have a big problem with resistance to failure, so it is harder for them to assimilate this knowledge.
The stereotype that girls are less digitally competent is also firmly held. And that only pretty girls will be successful. Two stereotypes in this study struck me the most. You could say they slapped me in my face.
Which ones?
The first is the stereotype of the perfect girl, which is identical to that of adult women. According to it, girls should be perfect because only then will they please teachers and parents, so they try to be good at all subjects, and for a very long time, much longer than boys. Consequently, they find areas that they enjoy learning much later.
This stereotype shows that we are socialised from an early age to please others. We are prepared to play the role of a mother, wife, caretaker of elderly parents, elderly in-laws, we are being prepared to be easy to control. Striving for perfection is, as we well know, doomed to failure because it is impossible to be a perfect girl at everything, a perfect woman, therefore it is clear that we will be insecure, prone to criticism, and that it will be easy to manipulate us.
From my studies of adult women, I know that those of us who do not abandon the delusion of perfection overdo it and burn out to gain outside approval. The stereotype of the perfect one is also grist to the mill for all types of marketing. Because if we are to be perfect, we must have a perfect face, hair, buttocks, buy the right cream, firm up certain areas and depilate. It does not pay off to tell girls that they can relax and stop deluding themselves that they will be perfect at everything, that they can choose an area in which they will find fulfilment.
And the second stereotype?
It says that girls are diligent but mediocre. And no matter what a girl does, how much she wants to meet these external expectations, it will always turn out that boys are better – because they are less conventional, bolder. It’s a heartbreaking story about a girl who really cares, who tries, does her best, and wants to satisfy teachers and parents’ expectations so much until she lands in a place that is absolutely unfair to her. In a place where she is average, not ambitious enough, not brave enough and not particularly interesting. A docile girl is less interesting so people spend less time with her. When girls obey their teachers’ orders, they are perceived as conformist. And although they might try their best, they will be considered average. And if they break away, they are considered troublemakers, rascals. But this is not the same as a mischievous boy who people are sympathetic to because he is a character. She is a troublesome girl who causes anxiety and anger, she may not get along in her life because of this mischief, so she must be chastened as soon as possible.
This reminds me very much of the results of studies on adult women which clearly show that whatever path a woman takes, she will still face criticism and rejection. If she combines motherhood with work, it is bad, because according to many, her child will suffer, if she stays at home with the child, it will be very bad because she will be financially dependent, if she does not give birth to a child, then of course it is also terrible. Being a woman means being constantly evaluated.
When I was in elementary school, a friend of mine and I once got a silly mood in maths class and made up nasty names that rhymed with each other. A colleague in front of us wrote everything down carefully. Each time he turned around we laughed even more intensely. At one point, the mathematician took the piece of paper from him. She read it and turned purple. “This is going in your student record!” she screamed. “But it wasn’t me, miss, it was the girls!” the boy replied. The teacher replied, “Girls would never say such things to one another!”
This perfectly demonstrates a teacher’s idea of girls. Girls are polite, they don’t swear. The teacher probably didn’t allow herself the thought that girls can differ a lot. I have a feeling that both teachers and parents often lack the time and the space to look at who they are dealing with, what is the potential of girls, what energy they have. We often use calques to make our lives easier. And it’s worth asking yourself: why am I judging this child in this particular way? What is speaking for me? Look at specific people we deal with. It is worth noting that boys are also negatively affected by gender stereotypes. Because they, like girls, are not allowed to be themselves. A boy with an artistic taste? A boy who wants to paint his nails? This is where things get tough, boys are tightly trimmed to a square pattern. Preschool boys are told that showing emotions is not masculine. They are taught to cut themselves off from feeling anything. Life cut off from one’s own emotions is difficult both for these boys, and then for men, and for their relatives – partners and children.
Strengthening girls is one of the greatest contemporary social challenges, it is in fifth place among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, which proves how important this problem is not just for us, but also around the world.
Gender equality is not only a universal human right, it is also the cornerstone of a sustainable world. The United Nations places equality issues high, bearing in mind both economic and political goals, based on the premise that without gender mainstreaming, there is no better future. Fighting domestic violence also works through empowering girls and women. The greater the emphasis on gender equality, the less it appears.
It is predicted that in the coming years there will be four categories of skills: interpersonal, social, systemic and cognitive. People who want to learn and are able to teach others will be highly appreciated. There is a whole range of skills and competences the acquisition of which can help girls cope with the world.
I wrote about them in a report for the Cosmos for Girls foundation, I encourage you to read it, it is available for free on their website. The facts are that the future is a great unknown, we don’t know what it will look like. We can only speculate.
According to a report by the World Economic Forum, which used data from the University of Oxford, in the future 65 percent of children born after 2007 will work in jobs that have not yet arisen, and 47 percent of current professions will disappear from the labour market.
Therefore, it is impossible to say directly what the future of our children will be like. Together with Eliza Durka, the then president of the Cosmos for Girls Foundation, and with the girls from the foundation’s team, we agreed that the report would talk not about the competences of the future that will help earn a lot of money, but about those that will help lead a good, fulfilled life. In the report, we list competences that will help our children be happy in the future. The data clearly shows what needs to be strengthened in girls in order for them to function well in society, in the labour market, and in relationships.
What is it?
It is the ability to cooperate, i.e. the ability to work on a project, emotional intelligence, respect for diversity, digital competences, i.e. openness to new technologies, technological efficiency, and – very importantly – inner control: the courage to be a leader, creativity.
This inner control is understood by experts as emotional balance, resistance to external conditions – criticism, rejection – the ability to stay in balance even when not everything is going well on the outside. And it is not about raising a tough girl who will not be moved by anything – rather a person who knows how to be close to herself. Not all girls have this inner control. Due to the fact that they want to be perfect, they want to meet the expectations of teachers and parents, they can pay attention to what others think more often, devalue their own opinions, as long as they do not agree with the opinion of others. It is clear that if we want to shape the competences of the future in girls, it is worth focusing on the difficult ability to cooperate with others while maintaining their own independence.
The report shows that schools are not really shaping these competences of the future.
Schools in Poland do not have developed system solutions. Of course, there are institutions that deal with these issues, but there are too few of them. Unfortunately, the school reassures girls that they are less important – in textbooks only one-fourth are female authors, 10 percent of illustrations are drawings of women. Iwona Chmura-Rutkowska, who was one of the experts in our study, writes about this a lot. The female perspective is less present in textbooks, so it seems less important. I would like to point out that there are state schools where teachers themselves make up for the shortcomings in the core curriculum, bring additional materials, talk about the history of women because there are few role models in textbooks. Praise them for that! From a curriculum point of view, girls from the first to the eighth grade learn about men.
This is why project work is so important, where the roles in which children appear are rotated. In such a system, girls learn to assume the role of a leader. If this happens several times in a row, it may turn out that they fit these roles. There is some effort involved – be it on the part of the teacher or the parent – to persuade children to assume these roles. Over 500 teachers were present at the webinar I ran for the Children’s University. Many of them emphasised that it is not easy to persuade children to work differently, to offer them different roles than those they take on a daily basis. That is why we are talking about the work and effort that must be made to help girls shape the competences of the future. For me, it is a story about the responsibility of adults.
Are girls in solidarity?
They complain about the lack of support among each other. I have no figures, but my research with girls shows that they lack female solidarity. They are often jealous of boys who keep their heads together. I have been dealing with sisterhood for several years and I know the data on adult women. 42 percent of Polish women have the impression that women are satisfied when other women do not manage to do everything, and in the younger age group, 18-24 years old, 58 percent think so.
The lack of sisterhood is a bane of childhood and youth for many women. After all, we are brought up to be rivals, to try to be better than the other. We are not always able to enter into relationships with other women without judging them beforehand. We are socialised to be compared to each other. I know from research on adult Polish women that women feel judged through the prism of other women’s life choices – if you chose a career and combine it with motherhood and I took a different path, your life choice automatically makes me feel judged by you. This makes it difficult to be close to other women, to look at them openly and to develop empathy.
Girls compare each other’s appearance a lot.
And as much as 89 percent are dissatisfied with it. They have a huge problem with self-acceptance. This is a topic that is not talked about enough – because we are now talking about younger girls who are starting to mature, they are 10 or 11 years old. Their bodies begin to change, they start to worry about them and they understand that beauty is of great importance because it provides social acceptance. Success in boys is closely related to what their body and face look like. Maturing girls begin to look more intensely in the mirror. It takes up a lot of their time, destroys their self-esteem, and they cannot cope with low self-esteem because they think that they are useless. 80 percent of girls in Poland consider themselves useless.
What does this mean?
That they feel unimportant, invisible, inadequate, out of place. It is terrifying how many Polish girls are disgusted by themselves, how much they care about their appearance and physiology. We adults begin to talk to them about it too late, we enter these areas too late. We often don’t know how to do it.
How should we do it then?
Strengthen them. In their decisions, superpowers. Say that they are smart, that they are doing great, encourage them to experiment. This could counteract the stereotypical tendency of girls to choose safely and avoid failure. One of the posters in the magazine “Cosmos for Girls” bears the slogan: “You will only see if you can do it if you try.” This is a proposal for a girl to give herself permission for the proverbial slip. So that she can understand that thanks to this she gets to know herself and her reactions better. So that she can know that mistakes and failures are okay, that without them there would be no great scientists, artists. Failures are a part of life and it is not worth avoiding them because we are robbing ourselves of our experiences.
It is not easy for a child who hates failures to show them their value.
But we should do this because thanks to this we shape a person who will be more resistant. I also believe that girls should be given the right to fulfil themselves in various other ways. Don’t be scared when you want to emphasise your femininity. We used to be like that, we also put on make-up in the eighth grade and wore short tops – these are eternal problems, nothing has changed here. Perhaps only that parents are now putting more effort into raising their daughters to be independent. You should bear in mind that sooner or later this parental contribution will sprout.
What else can we do for girls to make them stronger?
Notice them not by appearance, but by personality, passions and interests. Talk to girls who live next door, ask for advice on what book to buy as a gift for another girl, compliment a loud scream, a strong ball throw. You can celebrate various interesting occasions with girls such as the Day of Women and Girls in Science. You can celebrate the date of birth of your daughter’s favourite artist, singer or painter with her, look for the creators behind animated fairy tales and tell her about them. There are a lot of such ideas. At the same time, we should work with boys, talk to them about girls and the difficulties they face. Talk to boys about how you listen to girls, not just look at them. Talk about violence, both physical and mental. Talk about difficult topics because such conversations are still very scarce. And you can really talk to your children wisely about everything.
Marta Majchrzak – psychologist and social researcher, founder of the research company Herstories.pl
Author: Monika Tutak - Goll
Illustration: Marta Frej
The text was published in „Wysokie Obcasy” a magazine of „Gazeta Wyborcza” on 5 June 2021
