Over the past 50 years, dramatic leaps have been made when it comes to gender equality in education and the workforce. However, we still undisputedly deal with intellectual women being put down by society. In 2011 Gymboree sold onesies saying “Smart like Daddy” for boys and “Pretty like Mommy” for girls. How rude, am I right? Unlike little boys, who are encouraged to be leaders through super-heroes and athletes, us girls are given babydolls and dress up clothes. We are raised to believe that our value is based upon how sweet and nurturing we appear through our actions and, even worse, our appearance. Although some of this is based on our biological differences from males, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of facebook, argues that“how individuals view what they can and should accomplish is in large part formed by our social expectations” and I agree. Even today, in a time where women have just as much access to education as men, too many girls feel the need to downplay their IQ and by default lack the motivation to excel in a school or work setting.
Why is this you ask? Shouldn’t equal access equate to equal opportunity? Here’s the problem ladies and gentleman: we live in a society that doesn’t ENCOURAGE women to succeed. Think about it, today’s pop culture often portrays girls who are smart as weird and bossy. Nearly every show has that one nerdy girl in the glasses that is constantly making annoying comments about pi and the periodic table; Quin in Zoey 101, Eunice in She’s the Man, Sara in Hannah Montana.
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Is this really the image we want to put out there for young girls? That in order to be smart you have to be a nerd? In today’s society “when a girl tries to lead, she is often labeled bossy” or possibly worse (Sandberg). Even I, who went to a competitive high school and understood the importance of intelligence, always hesitated when it came to correcting one of my male classmates in fear of seeming like a know it all. According to Anne-Marie Slaughter, the president and CEO of the New America Foundation“If women are ever to achieve real equality as leaders, then we have to stop accepting male behavior and male choices as the default and the ideal”. In other words, we need to, as a society, stop viewing women as academically inferior.
What many women fail to recognize is that education is a novelty. Just one century ago, almost all universities were strictly for males. It was not until the 1950’s and 60’s that women finally started to receive the higher education that they deserved. Education served as a way for women to escape their roles as house-makers and succeed in the professional world. However, as higher education is becoming more and more readily available to women, it’s immense value is being lost. I once had a friend tell me, somewhat jokingly, that “there was no reason for her to go to school since she would just be a housewife anyway”. The comment immediately offended me, didn’t she know that the point of all of this was so that she didn’t have to be a housewife? For the last 50 years women have put extreme effort into getting us equal opportunity, so why is it that so many young women today are passively letting that slip by?
The answer:
“Girls growing up today are not the first generation to have equal opportunity, but they are the first to know that all that opportunity does not necessarily translate into professional achievement” (Sandberg).
In other words, just because women have the same access to education as men doesn’t mean that they are treated equally in the workforce. Many women fall behind when taking maternity leave early and have to spend their entire careers trying to catch up to their male counterparts. Additionally many qualified women will struggle to balance their time between work and family, which may lead them to quit in the long run. My own grandmother who did not go to college herself worked numerous jobs throughout my mom’s life in order to send her and her sister through college. After graduating my mom worked for seven years before deciding to be a stay at home mom. While I completely respect her decision, and loved having her around as a child, I think this is where our problem is rooted. Girls today are not motivated in the classroom because they “watched their mother’s try to ‘do it all’ and then decide something had to give- that something was usually their careers” (Sandberg).
What does this mean? It means that many women ultimately leave their jobs in order to be a more involved parent and in effect, young girls assume that they will ultimately face the same fate, forcing them to question if their education is worth it.
Okay enough of the dreary stuff. What I really want to touch on in this post is how, as a society we can start to fix these problems. While I agree that it’s challenging for women to excel in their careers and raise a family, I think it’s crucial that we don’t let our progress in education and the work force slip away. The first step? Stop separating the images of “smart girl” and “pretty girl” for our youth. We often times view the two as separate entities forgetting that girls are able to be academically serious while still caring about superficial things like makeup and fashion. I myself have both a fashion and academic blog (as you can clearly see), and love to spend lots of the time I’m not stuck in the library dressing up and going out. Honestly, I think all students, boys and girls alike could benefit from realizing that being academically prestigious doesn’t have to take place of outside of school hobbies.
In addition to shifting our perception of the “ideal” woman, I think we need to focus on erasing gender stereo types all together. The idea that women are softer and less independent doesn’t start when we enter the workforce or even school, but from the time we are born. Even in gay relationships we commonly label one partner as the “husband” of the relationship and one as the “wife”. And what characterizes the “wife”? The partner who is tender, sweet, “pretty”, and often times not as smart. Not only is this an offensive and disheartening realization, but it may also be detrimental to female success. If we are constantly surrounded by the idea that we are stupid we will, in effect, perform worse. This theory, the “stereotype threat”, rings especially true when relating to math and science. It is a commonly misconceived notion that boys are better at math and science than girls. Because of this women are often discouraged from entering technology and computer science fields. Additionally, it has been noted that even a simple M vs F checkbox at the top of a math or science test can cause a girl to perform worse because it reminds them of their gender (Sandberg). We need to recognize as a society that women are not only as creative as males but also equally as analytic and authoritative.
In short, we, as women, often let society rape us of our IQs. Despite that fact that women have finally received equal rights within the education system, we are often duped into believing that we do not want, or are not worthy of these academic opportunities. My conclusion? That we must not only work harder in pursuing our studies, but all together change what American’s view as societal norms. Women are smart and capable of learning and should feel not only encouraged to excel in school, but obligated. Little girls should be reminded that intellectual achievement has no sexual borders, and that leadership skills are in the individual not the gender. As Sheryl Sandberg once said “I urge more women to believe in themselves and to aspire to lead”. I feel certain that just a little bit more confidence in female capabilities will go a long way when it comes to both school and work settings.
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Sandberg, Sheryl. “Lean In: What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid.” They Say, I Say (2015) : 642-658. Print.
Slaughter, Anne-Marie. “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” They Say, I Say (2015) : 676-696. Print.
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