MIRROR MIRROR: THE POWER OF ROLE MODELS FOR GIRLS

Photo: Janko Ferlic

At school, I was never pegged to be an academic. It was my older

sister who showed me a door to freedom of thought and opportunity by

attending university as an older adult. I watched her blossom, and she

encouraged me to try, so I also attended university. Without getting those

cues from my sister modelling the courage and tenacity to educate herself

further, I would never have followed that path and reached a place that

allows me to navigate the path I have chosen to follow successfully.

A decade later I am fortunate enough to work with teen girls, helping them

build those muscles they need to meet the world head-on – resilience, self-

leadership, self-awareness. Through this role, I have gained insight into how

girls view themselves in the world, identifying that what we all struggle with as

women is successfully carving out a path that doesn’t limit us to playing small.

While there are far more opportunities for girls to flourish, girls are struggling

with poor mental health as they traverse their life course that appears

sprawling while also limited to certain paths afforded to women.

What has helped me in my journey has been fierce female role models out

there blazing trails. It’s these women who give support and insight into the

practicalities of carving out life without burning out or limiting themselves. If

we don’t, girls will continue to look to some of the popular celebrity role

models and influencers that only feed their insecurities, not their minds or

their hearts.

There are still paths that remain difficult to access for all women, especially for

women of colour. In 2020 scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle

Charpentier won the Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry, making headlines as two of

the few women to have received a Nobel Prize for Science over the years. Of

the 904 individuals awarded the Nobel Prize since1901, only 58 have been

women, (https://stacker.com/stories/1709/57-women-who-have-won-nobel-

prize) *Maria Resser from the Philippines has recently been awarded, Nobel Peace

Prize for 2021, the only woman to do so.

Dr Margie Warrell, in Forbes magazine, wrote “...when girls can readily see

women rising, on their terms, it spurs their ambitions.”

(https://www.jstor.org/stable/4132808). However, girls often do not get to

see women who look like them, rising. It is not that we don’t rise, of course, we do

– but that they are so often hidden from view, quietly changing the world.

There was a social media post recently that really highlighted the lack of

recognition trailblazing women receive. It references a woman sitting in a lecture

when the Professor, holding up a bone marked by 28 incisions, explains that the

incisions were a man’s first attempt at a calendar. He asked the class why he might

have done this, why 28 days? This led the female student to suggest it was likely a

woman who needed to mark a 28-day cycle, highly likely then it was a woman

who created the calendar. I rolled my eyes at this anecdote while thinking

about how women’s accomplishments are often misattributed to men. We live

in a society that often ignores the accomplishments of women if those successes

do not fit the social constructs women are encouraged to inhabit, Maggie

Hamilton, author of the book “What’s Happening to Our Girls?”, writes “The toys,

programs and clothes we choose for our little girls reveals a great deal about

how we see girls and women – how they should look and behave, and what

they aspire to.”

How can we ensure all women are seen for their accomplishments and to lead

our girls to build life goals that challenge but don’t limit them?

• Talk about all women positively, highlighting women who are achieving in

an arena that is of interest to your child/students.

• If you are a teacher, have pictures of successful women in the classroom.

Ones from history and today, and talk about their lives.

• Get your students to research the lives of women who have done

amazing things – the suffragists, global leaders, scientists, feminists from the

past.

Women will always blaze trails, we don’t really have a choice - I’m looking at you

Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, et al, incredible, courageous women. When

women give younger women directions to roads that have been cleared, girls

can be the trailblazers they want to be. Without having to clear the same trail

over and over like so many women before have had to do, they can be

free to build their own future.

Vicky Pond Dunlop

Director, Enlighten Education NZ

February 2022