Friday 29 November 2013

Girls- Why their opinons really matter

Disclosure warning- please be aware that the later paragraphs of this post are pretty personal but these things needed saying.

Today Girlguiding has published their annual report about how girls within the movement perceive various issues that matter to them.

See the video below for a quick round up of some of the key facts-



 

Now lots of people may be wondering why this matters so much. I'd like to shed some light on this personally regarding the questions the girls answered about everyday sexism.

The report says this:

Three quarters of girls and young women feel that sexism is so widespread in our society today
that it affects most areas of their lives (75%). Of girls aged 11 to 21, 87% think that women are
judged more on their appearance than on their ability. Of those aged 16 to 21, 60% have felt
patronised or been made to feel stupid because of their gender. This is true for a third of all girls
aged 7 to 21 (36%)
You might feel you could dismiss this, 'it's okay to judge women on their appearance'... that when a girl wears make-up, does her hair, puts on a skirt... she's giving others the right to make a value judgement on her. When I looked at the world around me when I was aged 16 to 21 I would say that I felt the same as the girls and young women in this survey do, and that feeling hasn't changed in the last eight years.
 Now I'm not your typical woman... I rarely wear make-up, I can do DIY... I took Physics A Level because I was good at mechanics. I really just want to be taken seriously however I choose to look, but I'm not... I feel an immense pressure to have my nails done, and my hair coloured and put on layers of makeup, not because I want to but mainly because I am bombarded by imagery that says I should... and when everyone else does anyway it can make someone feel pretty excluded in they don't join in. I'm not saying it's not nice to do those things... and of course sometimes I dress up but I shouldn't HAVE to be taken seriously.

I've been made to feel really uncomfortable just for being a young woman, and it should stop.

Another of the most shocking statistics for me is the percentage of girls who have experienced unwanted touching- 28%.

Do you need that rationalising for you? That's more than a quarter of girls. In a class of 30 where half are girls that's four of them. And if it's happened to them once it will happen again because it makes them vulnerable... and then there are those at the girls of the survey group who felt so embarrassed and ashamed that they couldn't answer the question truthfully.

I know this because it happened to me, on the school bus and on more than one occasion. The aggressor was usually a much older boy 15-17 who wanted to show his friends how cool and edgy he was, I was about 12 or 13 at the time and I wish with all my heart now I'd felt I had a voice to speak out.
It would happen in front of a crowd of other people, boys and girls so it wasn't even a private shame... and it exposed me to some of the worst pain imaginable, not only was I being assaulted but other people where watching and knew exactly how vulnerable I was and there was no where to go to get away.

What you may find shocking, (and so you should) is that these acts are more than often dismissed by teaching staff as normal teenage stuff, boys are hormonal goes the logic... girls are wearing short skirts, you can expect some sexual tension. What I experienced has certainly affected my personal and sexual relationships, it's sometimes affected my ability to work and most importantly it wasn't my fault, there is nothing I ever did to provoke this behaviour.

I hope the opinions of girls start to get taken seriously, because I believe that when we let our young women get mistreated in this way and we turn a blind eye we're actively preventing them from reaching their potential.

(I've been updating spelling mistakes I've spotted during the day, I was pretty emotional when I wrote this so I hope you excused my poor spelling)

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