With International Women's Day just happening, (and being a girl who grew up on princess movies) I found this Ted Talk and thought it was very relevant. I loved the use of Frozen's Queen Elsa as an example. Its a great movie and was written by a University of New Hampshire alum!
Personally, I remember an instance in elementary school so vividly where I was called bossy. It was in second grade and I was in a group with 4 boys doing a project. I noticed one of the boys had spelt "Mississippi" wrong and I politely corrected him. He was so angry that I noticed his mistake, he retreated to a corner of the classroom and muttered "bossy pants" and carried on with his work. I felt so guilty for the rest of the day, and the project, and will never forget being called that name.
I think this ties well into the thought of : "is it better to be feared or loved?" Kelly Parisi uses the example of Queen Elsa, being so worried that her powers will scare people, that she runs away to isolation, builds herself an ice castle, and hides from the world. Rather than facing her fears and learning to lead. I feel like this is an important lesson to hold on to. As a woman or a man, we should not be afraid to use our strengths to lead for the fear of being disliked, or being called bossy.
Nothing wrong with being a lady boss! Love that you still remember this. Definitely hard growing up as a strong willed girl. When I was in first grade I ran for student body president of my elementary school against a male fourth grader. Most of what I got out of it was people thinking I was a legitimate psychopath. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ girl power is funny like that.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious how many times you were called bossy by another girl vs. a boy (or a woman vs. a man). Speaking as a father of three girls, I observed how girls were often quite cruel to each other in a way that punished difference. It seems this kind of early cruelty and conformity is what perhaps leads to later collaborative rather than competitive behaviors. I don't have any research to back this up - it's purely anecdotal based on watching my daughters grow up. But I have watched adult nurses - mostly women - treat each other badly. It's commonly said that "nurses eat their young". So that does seem to validate my observation. However, you could argue that such behavior happens within a patriarchal system, and if the larger society were not male-dominated, there would be less dysfunction in female run enclaves (like nursing). Hard to say since we don't actually have the counterfactual. What is true is that women now represent a near equal portion of the active workforce, achieve higher levels of education, and are less likely to be unemployed during a recession. That has mostly happened in my lifetime. I suspect in your lifetime, you will see a radical shift in the make up of leadership in our country as these changes work their way up from the bottom to the top.
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