Skip to main content

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 5th 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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Women and Business Communication

While it would be unfair to say women are inherently organized and emotional, and men are naturally cold and sloppy, there is truth in the statement that women can communicate in a way that allows them to connect in an authentic and genuine way with others. The communication styles of men and women are vastly different, given that each group communicates for different purposes. According to a study on Gender Differences in Communication Styles, Influence Tactics, and Leadership Styles done at Claremont McKenna College, “The biggest difference between men and women and their style of communication boils down to the fact that men and women view the purpose of conversations differently. Academic research on psychological gender differences has shown that while women use communication as a tool to enhance social connections and create relationships, men use language to exert dominance and achieve tangible outcomes. Women are, overall, more expressive, tentative, and polite in conversation,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Supporting Working Parents and its Impact on Women

Women have to overcome the barriers of parenthood, often with minimal support from their employers; men tend to be applauded for holding down a career and managing their fatherly duties. At a basic level, there is a lack of support for families, working parents face many struggles, and if companies are to empower women they need to begin supporting working parents across the board, “ As in an Olympic relay race, working parenthood depends on the ability to successfully navigate transition points — the hand-offs, the turns. Coming back from leave, welcoming a second or third child, or accepting a change in role or schedule are just a few of the transition points that can derail or strain the most competent working parent employee. That’s why concentrating benefits and programming on these critical points can yield significant return on investment.  Johnson & Johnson permits mothers and fathers to use their parental leave on a phase-back basis, ensuring ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Women in Banking

     According to Sheryl Sandberg in her groundbreaking book Lean In, “Women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States in the 1980s. Since then, women have slowly and steadily advanced, earning more and more of the college degrees, taking more of the entry-level jobs, and entering more fields previously dominated by men. Despite these gains, the percentage of women at the top of corporate America has barely budged over the past decade. A meager 21 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women” (Sandberg, pg. 5). I talked to a few women who work within the business realm, and they acknowledge the need for women within the workplace. Laura works as an Assistant Branch Manager for Citizens Bank, and she states, “Women in the field I feel are a doubled edged sword. We are perceived as less knowledgeable, especially around business accounts versus personal accounts. Banking is traditionally seen as a man’s role where the teller side is more traditionally ...
Post a Comment
Read more