From: Angela Bolton
Email: jello@cats.ucsc.edu
Course: Diversity and Development
College: UCSC
Instructor: Eugene Ematusov
ClassWeb: http://www.ematusov.com
ChildrenObservations: No
Date: 19 Apr 1997
Time: 18:09:25
Remote Name: ss1-pc38.ucsc.edu
Young women have a tremendously difficult time coping during and after adolescence. Society today pressures girls to hide their true selves and instead be nice, cheerful, pretty girls who never cause any trouble. Research findings show that girls, when compared to boys, have a greater increase in depression, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts and a fall in self-esteem at the time of adolescence. But there are ways to combat the internalization of societal expectations. Girls need to be affirmed, listened to, and respected by those around them. There are magazines that affirm girls sense of self worth as well as foundations like the Foundation for Women that make young girls feel they are important and can accomplish anything they put their minds to.
Friedman and Mann (1993) studied 1028 adolescents (aged 13.5 - 14.5 years) in Israel and 428 adolescents (mean age 13.6 years) in Australia. They were administered a scale that measured self-reported levels of confidence in decision making and tendencies to use various decision-patterns. In both samples boys outscored girls on self-confidence as decision makers and boys scored lower on panicky behavior.
Similarly, Stables and Stables (1995) examined the degree to which choices and perceptions of subjects vary according to gender. Questionnaire surveys were completed by 209 students (aged 16 -19 years) at a tertiary college in the UK. Results showed that females lacked confidence relative to males, both in terms of how much advice they felt they needed and in their feelings about whether they were coping satisfactorily with the academic demands of the courses. The females were better qualified than the males, yet sometimes responded in ways characteristic of a less able group.
Why is it that although adolescent girls are oftentimes more qualified for a task they display less self-confidence than boys display? Both of the previous studies are on girls after the age of eleven, after the beginning of adolescence. Before adolescence girls and boys display the same amount of self-confidence and self-worth (Gilligan, 1991). Seven and eight year old girls tell people how they feel, mark relational violations and openly respond to what is happening in relationships, even when their response leads them to experience painful feelings or cause others to become upset (Gilligan, 1991). Block (1990) reports a sudden drop in girls resiliency around the age of eleven with no corresponding finding for boys at that age. Young girls believe their thoughts are good and valid, but when they reach adolescence a drastic shift occurs.
Adolescence witnesses a marked increase in episodes of depression, eating disorders, poor body image, suicidal thoughts and a fall in girls' sense of self-worth (Gilligan, 1991). Why does this occur? Today teenage girls are living in a culture that sets unreachable standards of beauty and behavior in a culture that never gives approval (Stefango, 1996, web site). Due to media images and societal expectations in general, girls want to be the nice, pretty woman who causes few problems. Girls may internalize messages that they need to be pretty, kind and obedient, never having bad feelings or thoughts (Rothenberg, 1996, web site). Traditionally women have been told to be nurturing and supportive to others and many women believe that they are being selfish if they do what they want to do, instead of doing what others want them to do (Snell, 1996, web site). As young boys are pressured to take on images of heroes or super heroes, so girls are pressed to take on images of perfection as the model of the pure or perfectly wonderful woman whom everyone will promote, value and want to be with (Gilligan, 1991).
Girls face a psychological crisis at the time of adolescence; a crisis to which they respond by devaluing themselves and feeling worthless. Peterson et al (1991) compared depressed affect in early and middle adolescence focusing on the difference between girls and boys. It was found that girls are at a higher risk for developing a depressed affect by 12th grade because they have experienced more challenges in early adolescence than boys experienced. Yet some girls respond to the crisis by disagreeing publicly. These girls end up dissociating themselves from the institutions which devalue them (Gilligan, 1991). Michelle Fine (1986) found that girls who drop out of inner-city schools, at the time they drop out, are among the most intelligent and the least depressed. These girls drop out of school because they do not fit in. They can not conform to the stereotypical female role, which makes them outcasts. For boys and girls that are in school their biggest preoccupation is school. But one-third of girls worry about their looks, weight, and being called a slut (Wright, 1996, web site).
After adolescence girls must fight many fights to get to a point where they feel good about themselves again. Girls need to learn to accept and love themselves, not reject and hide their true selves from the world. This is incredibly difficult in the world today, with media and social norms working against them. There are ways to help girls maintain the self worth and self-confidence they exhibit before adolescence. Girls need to be accepted for who they are, listened to, and their dreams need to be respected. Girls need space to speak their feelings. This will help build resilience and healthy resistance to gender inequalities (Gruver, 1996, web site). These needs can be met partially by a magazine called New Moon, which is not the kind of magazine that tells girls who they should be or that they should be the perfect girl. Rather, New Moon emphasizes the acceptance of girls for who they are and the dreams they hold (Gruver, 1996, web site). The Foundation for Women (1996, web, site) sponsors a day where girls take a day off from school and go to work with mothers or other adults. One young woman, age 13, was quoted saying a day to ourselves "makes us feel good." Another 13 year old girl said that her confidence was boosted so much that she speaks out on issues that she normally avoided in the past. The Foundation for Women believes that boys deserve programs to help them cope with the stresses of early childhood, while girls need help dealing with issues through adolescence, because that is when girls' distress occurs.
The pressure for women to be nice and pleasant is incredible. When girls are young, they do not have to adhere to these norms, but as they get older they become more aware of how they are supposed to act and relate to others. This new way of relating to others is like lying. This lying or smashing or ignoring of the real self brings self-confidence down in girls at the time of adolescence and it tends to stay down until women realize that their voices inside are meaningful and worthy of being heard.
REFERENCES
Fine, M. (1991). Framing dropouts: Notes on the politics of an urban public high school. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.
Foundation for Women. (1996). http://www.ms.foundation.org/faq.html
Friedman, I. A., & Mann, L. (1993). Coping patters in adolescent decision making: An Israeli-Australian comparison. Journal of Adolescence, 16, 187-199.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gruver, N. (1996). newmoon@newmoon.deluth.mn.us
Snell. (1996). Web site.
Stables, A., & Stables, S. (1995). Gender differences in students approaches to A-level subject choices and perceptions of A-level subjects: A study of first-year A-level students in a tertiary college. Educational Research, 37, 39-51.
Peterson, A. C., Sarigiani, P. A., & Kennedy, R. S. (1991). Adolescent depression: Why mere girls? Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 20, 247-271.
Rothenberg, D. (1995). Recent ERIC digest on early adolescent girls. Web site.
Stefango, A. (1996). http://www.swe.org/SWE/Regional/Detroit/CDBooks/1196pipher.html
Wright. (1996). Web site.