On a trip down the typical toy aisle at any major department store, one inevitably encounters a blaring, pink section filled with Barbie Dolls, plastic jewelry, fluffy animals, and any number of stereotypically “girly” items we are told young women should enjoy. We buy them easy-bake ovens, plastic plates and teacups, and the cutest, pinkest aprons we can find, and with these items, our young girls learn to play the roles of housewife or mother they are taught they are destined to take in the future. With so many young women bombarded by an abundance of well-intentioned but ultimately stereotypically “feminine” gifts from their parents, is it any wonder that so few of them even entertain the possibility of entering into such traditionally male-dominated fields as engineering when they grow up? Society never gives them any impression that they should strive for such jobs.

Debbie Sterling, a former engineering student from Stanford University who was shocked and distressed by the near total lack of female students in her program, wants to change this sad trend and help usher in a new generation of female engineers. GoldieBlox is a toy company which offers girls a viable alternative to the standard, fluffy princess dolls and dresses which we normally provide as playthings for our young girls. Instead of dolls and trinkets, GoldieBlox offers construction toys and books in the hopes of inspiring dreams of engineering in the hearts of the younger generation.

At the beginning of the commercial for GoldieBlox toys, we are introduced to three young girls in front of a television, slumping over in disinterest at a doll commercial. To solve their boredom, they, clothed in small engineering outfits, create an elaborate system of gadgets and trinkets which twists and turns through the house and around the yard until it finally presses the channel button and switches the screen from the doll commercial and to a screen of a blonde girl with an engineering hat and overalls. This is Goldie Blox, an engineer, and – shockingly! – a girl as well.

The Goldie Blox we are shown in this commercial represents one version of an ideal girl which we rarely see amongst the lines of princess dolls and fairy cartoons which normally graces the pink toys aisle at the department store. She is pretty, but this is not her defining feature. She is smart, she is resourceful, and she has little or no interest in dresses or sparkly things. This is a new vision of the young woman, one which allows girls to feel as though an interest in building and creating things is just as desirable and just as fun than an interest in clothes and pink, frilly things. She represents an attempt to represent what the ideal girl might look like if the gender roles which define most of girls’ toys had simply disappeared.

What would happen if we were simply rid of the flashy, pink toy aisle at the department store? Would the world collapse? Or would girls finally feel free to explore those traditionally masculine pursuits, such as building and engineering? GoldieBlox seeks to establish this world of equality between the genders, beginning with the utter destruction of the gender stereotypes which prevent so many of our bright young women from exploring the world of engineering.

The post GoldieBlox: a Revolution for Girls appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

People ask me what is special about my mentorship that has made Malala so bold, so courageous, so vocal and so poised?

Don’t ask me what I did; ask me what I did not do.

I did not clip her wings. – Ziauddin Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai is truly an international icon. She is the poster girl for women’s education and a role model for everyone pursuing their beliefs in the face of adversity. She has shown indomitable strength, passion and courage and has already achieved so much at the tender age of 16. Yet her determination, her courage and her commitment have also been nurtured and encouraged by her family in the face of extreme difficulty. They have broken the cycle of patriarchal tradition and have not only permitted her to aspire and dream but they have also had  the confidence not to listen to the consensus of traditional opinion and instead, they actively and proudly helped, inspired and encouraged her.

This is a family who do not look to history see the oppression of women and think: tradition. They look to the past for examples of fortitude and innovation and take comfort from a world which is neither stagnant nor accepting the status quo. The family has questioned the notion that their daughter’s only identity is bound up in the honour of her father and brothers and they challenge the cult of obedience which submits girls to a life they did not choose.

Ziauddin Yousafzai is a revolutionary father in that he wishes to break the cycle which subjugates women in both state law and family law. He wishes to open the doors to the world of dreams and aspirations where children, boys and girls, can explore their potential for the future through education. Not only is he allowing the education of women but he is empowering them and emancipating them by both teaching them to unlearn the cult of obedience but also by educating the next generation of men by re-evaluating their attitudes to honour. As much as he has inspired his daughter, he is now proud to be known as ‘Malala’s father’ and he in turn is inspired by her courage, reliance and determination. Yet, whilst she is an icon for the rights of children and women for millions around the world, to him she is his daughter and like any other 16 year old girl trying to do her homework and quarrelling with her brothers!

Please watch his full speech to see how one father stood up and challenged the world around him for his daughter. He truly is an inspirational father.

Copyright: Katya Shut

Thankfully there are inspirational fathers around the world empowering and raising the ambitions of girls whatever society’s expectation of them. Not being a father myself, never mind an inspirational one, I thought I should get some advice. A close friend became a father just over a week ago to a beautiful girl called Layla. I asked him about his hopes and his fears for the future both for her as a daughter and for himself as a father:

I hope that she will be able to achieve and that she will be motivated and that she enjoys her learning in whatever subjects they might be. Above all I hope that she will be a good person, will know how to treat others, be caring and supportive but also conscious of danger and responsible. I know that I’m at risk of wanting her to play hockey and play the guitar but it’s more important to find out what is important to her.

There is always the potential capacity to be disappointed in the way others treat her but there are so many things you have no control of. That is the unpredictable nature of the challenges ahead. But more than that there is fear in the role of a parent, of being involved too much or too little. My role is going to change from being the caretaker of her every need to a facilitator for her to make decisions. The control will no longer be mine but hopefully I can offer direction and guidance.

Photo creadit: Father and Child by gagilas | CC

For me, the most telling thing, which told me straight away that he would be an inspirational father were the words:

I’m not interested in being inspirational myself in what I do but all I want is to enable her to be inspired.

He is conscious of enabling and empowering her, not clipping her wings. Hopefully the future looks bright as the next generation are taught how to fly and given the space to take flight.

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• More on Malala:  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24379018
• To get to know more:  http://malalafund.org
• Featured image: TedTalks

The post Inspirational Fathers – Ziauddin Yousafzai appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

Parenting guru Steve Biddulph puplished Raising Girls last year and claimed that “never before has girlhood been under such a sustained assault”. This should not be the case, surely? In the 21st century?

We are well aware that for women, there is some way to go before real equality but for those who think that it is just a matter of time for girls to ‘come through’, this is not going to be the case if the current onslaught on girls continues. For anyone in any doubt as to current levels of equality, please view this video which succinctly dispels the view that “women are equal now, more or less.”

In his book, Biddulph cites the media of propagating an attitude which prioritises the sexualisation of young girls and communicating a message that their bodies are more important than their brains. A culture of ‘not being good enough’ pervades the minds of young girls and imposes on them increasing pressure to be perfect.

There seems to be a paradox in culture today about how one should be a girl and it seems that whilst the aspirations for and expectations on young women today are higher (not necessarily a bad thing), they are supposed to master ‘girl’ things first and anything else is an extra. In order to be considered equal they must be perfect. If they are to be successful, financially independent, self-sufficient, confident leaders, they are also expected to have mastered the domestic sphere, be attractive and witty and thin, be supportive and caring and loving. If their skills fall only in the first category, somehow they are unfeminine and lesser women, if they are only adept in the second category they become ‘only’ women.

In a world of shifting and fluid identities and uncertainties it seems that certain stereotypes have become entrenched. In a world where everything is reduced to a marketable commodity or a snappy headline, gender has become an oversimplified set of opposites: pink versus blue, dolls versus trains, domesticity versus CEO, support versus leadership, family versus career, athlete versus well groomed etc. These positions help neither women nor men in understanding and respecting each other and these dichotomies are never more prominent than in children and baby shops. But it is not just about the things that you buy, there are many ways of influencing and inspiring young girls that they have a choice. They can be an athlete AND enjoy baking; they can be caring AND assertive, they can enjoy playing with dolls AND trains. Let us widen their worlds and encourage confidence in their choices:

Encourage confidence: Girls need to develop the confidence to express their opinions and disagree in a constructive way. This week has seen the rise of the twitter campaign to ban the word “bossy” due to the idea that boys showing the same behaviour are often considered ‘leaders’. There has been a mixed reaction to the campaign but despite discussions over the semantics of the word and whether or not this is gendered, one thing is clear: girls need to be able to express their opinions articulately, inspire others as leaders and enlist other’s support.

One important aspect of confidence is the development of resilience. There will be knock backs in life and it is the ability to try again which is such a feature of any successes. Typically, girls blame themselves more than considering failures to be their fault but successes a result of external factors¹ such as ‘luck’ rather than hard work and design. Internalising and punishing themselves for these ‘faults’ is not going to help girls get up, dust themselves down and look toward the next venture with the benefit of what they have learnt. Encourage children to reflect on things that haven’t worked and ask them: ‘How would you do it differently next time?’ Remember that children need to develop the processes to be able to do this so focus and praise that rather than the product and end result.

Be a role model. Research has shown that newborn girls are excellent mimics within hours of birth and, in this experiment, did better than boys at copying finger movements². Think carefully about what they might mimic from you, their parent and role model. How do you discuss issues such as weight in front of them? How do you show these attitudes towards food? Do you show them how to do a range of tasks from cooking and cleaning to physical tasks and DIY? We can’t all do everything (I know my DIY skills would probably electrocute me and cut off the power the whole street!) but be aware of what you are showing your baby girl how she should behave through copying your behaviour.

Encourage hobbies and interests. This is different to scheduling every hour of free time with activities and extracurricular lessons but hobbies can give your child a passion and develop motivation, determination and confidence. It can be something that makes them happy at the end of a long day and can put into perspective the difficulties of the day. Don’t assume that their interests will be the same as yours but at the same time some hobbies can be great to spend time as a family. Despite having been a grown up for many years, Sunday lunch with my family is always followed by a competitive game of tennis altogether!

Give girls choices. Don’t necessarily presume that you know what girls like and only provide them with stereotypical toys. Yes they may end up becoming obsessed with princesses and pink and these can be educational too, but don’t presume that they won’t therefore like playing football or building LEGO forts too. Think about encouraging a range of activities with a range of educational value.

Think about how much exposure to media and popular culture girls have and how to manage those messages. As all children grow, they are constantly looking at messages from the world around them telling them how they should ‘be’. The overwhelming messages which girls are bombarded with focus on ideas of perfection they can never meet. They also become aware of greater and greater levels of objectification where their bodies are used to sell products and accommodate boys’ desires. Encourage girls to read the messages and see how reality is manipulated with editing and airbrushing. Whilst removing all exposure to these things is unrealistic and doesn’t allow girls to learn to manage them, it can be limited to a certain extent.

• 1) http://www.kidspot.au
• 2) http://m.parenting.com/v/Baby/RealDifferenceBetwee

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By the age of three most children know whether or not they are a boy or a girl and have an understanding that this is something that is fixed. A gender identity is developed from around this point as children begin to understand what it means to be a boy or a girl and how one differs from the other.  At this point children begin to develop stereotypes which they apply to themselves and others as they try to understand who they are and how they should behave.  These become ever more fixed, becoming fairly rigidly defined by the age of around seven.  It is not anatomy that makes gender, it is the identity that comes from being a boy or a girl.

This development of gender identity is important because it shapes children’s attitudes and beliefs about themselves and those around them as well as influencing their life aspirations. In the following video, it is unsettling to see how fixed these children’s ideas of gender is. At this young age they have fixed ideas of how boys and girls should behave and what roles in life they “should” perform.

You might wonder why this matters. A recent survey of boys in Canada showed that despite 91% of men thinking that gender equality was a good thing for both sexes and 96% believing that girls should have the same opportunities as boys in their choices; defined gender roles were still in place with 30% believing that a women’s most important role was to take care of the home, 48% believing that the man should be the main breadwinner, and 45% believing that to be a man was to be tough¹. This doesn’t sound very much like gender equality to me where despite the survey respondents believing that women should have opportunities and choice, they also believed that certain paths should be chosen. This can be as damaging for boys as well as girls in trying to live up to what they believe their gender to be.

Early gender bias can

• shape their attitudes and beliefs related to their development of interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships,
• access to education equality,
• participation in the corporate work world,
• as well as stifling their physical and psychological well-being.

So where do these gender messages come from?

They are all around us from the way that parents, families, communities and schools can encourage certain sorts of play or dress or behaviour. It can come in the form of praise for physical play for boys and praise for playing quietly and gently for girls. It can come in the giving of certain toys which then dictates the child’s play, whether dressing a doll for a girl or playing at being a soldier for a boy. As children enter the wider world, these images are everywhere and have become ever more entrenched in recent years as toy companies desperately market and advertise their products seeking parents and children to part with their money. This continues for children all the way into adulthood and during this time they are receiving subliminal messages through advertising which propagates traditional gender roles or through expectations that science and maths and building things are the boys’ domain. This is all irrespective of a child’s own talents.

How can we give good gender messages to children?

This is increasingly difficult with the strength and visibility of the media in a young child’s life but there are things that can be done to redress the balance.

• Arrange mixed gender playdates. Don’t just group boys or girls together assuming that they will play better together. This is especially important in the early years in order to establish good relationships with girls and boys.
• Read books that show girls and boys taking on differing roles at home, in the workplace and within childhood.
•  Don’t stand for bullying or teasing based on gender and never use “Don’t be such a girl” to try to change either a boy or a girls’ behaviour. Instantly they can see that there is an inferiority associated with it.
• Think about the toys you give children. Do they encourage the child to play only in a certain sort of way? Provide choice and balance. Encourage exploration of numerous activities  without gendering them.

• Think about the tasks or jobs you give children to do. Do you split things equally between girls and boys? Do girls take on gardening or mending jobs and do boys help with cooking and cleaning?
• Let both boys and girls express their emotions and feel that it is ok to cry.
• Urge both boys and girls to be independent and problem solvers and not passive, waiting for someone else to help them.
• Attribute compliments to achievements and abilities rather than appearance.
• Limit media consumption especially adverts and once children are old enough, talk to them about what they are seeing and how it represents people.

Do you think that negative gender messages are on the rise? How do you provide positive messages to your sons and daughters? We would love to hear your thoughts.

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