Tell Girls to Speak Up, Don't Silence Them

As a little girl, I was constantly told I was too loud, too bossy, too smart, and too opinionated. When I reached the 5^th grade, I wrote a report on Epilepsy, having struggled with it for most of my life up to that point. The report was written in a scientific nature, I had done research for weeks, talking to my doctors and searching AskJeeves.com which was the popular search engine when the millennium began. I proudly presented the paper to my teacher to be judged at the science fair, she took me aside and called my Mother and said, “Your daughter did not, could not have written this paper.” She insisted my Mom and Dad wrote the paper, and created the diagram of the nervous system for me, I was heartbroken. Again, I was too smart for my own good, and it was unfathomable that an 11-year-old girl could possess such writing ability. I later submitted the same paper to Children’s Hospital, and they handed it out to families whose children were newly diagnosed with Epilepsy and hospitalized in their Neurology unit.

This snapshot of my childhood perfectly depicts the experience of being a woman in business or academics, and quite frankly any industry that has been dominated by men. Women learn in childhood that in order to be liked, succeed, and get married you must be quiet, fragile, and

subdued.

Fortunately, I have never been any of those things. However, I have felt the pressure to become a lesser version of myself, and I have seen the need to rein myself in depending on the social context. As women, “We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives – the messages that say it’s wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than me. We lower our own expectations of what we can achieve” (Sandberg, pg. 8). It may not be possible to laugh as loud as we want at work, and make ridiculous jokes, but we must always be true to ourselves as we pursue our goals. Authenticity is one of the most important characteristics a person can have, and others will notice if you are attempting to hide a iece of yourself.

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