I absolutely loved this post. Grrl power (as I call it) is a subject that is near and dear to my heart! I got on the Girl Effect site and gave them my email address and hope to get more involved. I mentor a 14 year old Mexican girl through Big Brothers/Big Sisters Project Mentor, and I also have a 14 year old goddaughter whom I have been a friend and mentor to for 8 years. Girls are amazing and with a little confidence they can do ANYTHING!

Nike is great to get behind this cause - I still remember their awesome TV spots around girls playing sports that used to get me all choked up when I’d see them (not that I was ever into sports as a girl, more of a bookworm myself). I’m not sure how we convince policy-makers and planners of the importance of this issue, but I know one way we (you and I) can both help out: write and tell stories about it!

:)

Good to see you’re passionate about the subject Lara! It’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart as well, partly because I grew up in a family heavily involved with AKDN development projects. The AKDN does a lot to foster the educational and healthcare access for girls, as well as training and microfinancing for women.

Let’s hope more people take the time to learn about just how important the empowerment of girls is to the future of humanity.

Grameen, the microcredit bank in Bangladesh (whose founder won the Nobel Peace Prize), focuses a lot on women because of this ripple effect.

While I’m pretty convinced that this ripple effect exists, I am not fully convinced that it helps women change how they are perceived by others. Gender roles are less fluid in developing countries, so female micro-entrepreneurs might encounter resistance from people who feel threatened (e.g. those same village elders).

I’m in a much better situation than your average weaver/cow herder in Bangladesh, but I still run into people who have trouble with the idea of career-focused women (“Why aren’t you married by now? Tick tock!”).

There are a lot of visible (domestic abuse) and invisible (family obligation, conformity) pressures that prevent women from taking control of their lives (financial, contraceptive, etc). Probably the first step to empowering women would be to identify these pressures and work within local cultural frameworks to lift them.

The anthropologist in me is definitely intrigued by your comments Zeena.

In class, we’d always talk about how these sentiments against career-focused women are a residual result of the historical patriarchy. The only way to break these residual effects are to create effective cultural change.

Affecting a cultural shift (and in this case, a possible cultural revolution) to change the way society frames the role of the woman is not an easy task for sure. And while there are those who will flock to large-scale and wide-scoping methods such as protests and petitions, I’d argue that the reason behind most effective cultural shifts are incremental. Laying the foundation for change through small actions end up being the catalyst for the larger, more vocal actions.

In that vein, I’d argue that while increasing education and vocational training for girls won’t necessarily make society’s inherent prejudices go away immediately, the small changes that will accrue will end up going a long way to create that kind of cultural change.

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