Editors’ Note: This piece was written as part of a collaboration between the Kentucky Student Voice Team and Young Authors Greenhouse. Through our Education Justice Writing workshops, young people from across Kentucky participated in a series of interactive lessons to support them to tell their stories of education inequities. They learned how to write commentaries and make an impact with words, and we are excited to share their extraordinary pieces on The Student Voice Forum.
It’s like it happened in slow motion. My coach’s words stunned me, hitting me like an icy wave. All we had done was to try to make a girls’ team within my school’s soccer club, but the coach had said, “No, you’ll get crushed.” I let it sink in, and the salt settled in my mouth, leaving her bitter words on the tip of my tongue. Then, she divided us up amongst the boys as if we were nothing but rag dolls.
That morning, people who participated in the middle school soccer club got up an hour early to go to school to play a few small-sided games. Nothing competitive; we were all just there to have fun. There had never been many girls that participated in the club, so my friend, my sister, and I decided that we should play as one girls’ team against the boys. We had our plan set. One of us was going to volunteer to be a captain and just pick the girls. It would be easy, especially since we were always picked last, anyway. We felt sure that we would have the coach’s approval, and we had our parents’ encouragement.
We set our plan to action, but we were cut off. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how real gender stereotyping was. Our coach played competitive sports all her life and is an advocate for girls’ sports. Did she even see what she was doing?
This just showed me how these ideas about people have become ingrained in our schools and communities. Whether it’s unconscious or unintentional, it’s been an idea that girls aren’t good at sports generations before ours, and somehow it’s still persisting. Instead, girls “should” be good at crafts and cooking, and boys are the only ones that can be athletic. From ancient times, men were the hunters outside workers, and women were seen as house workers, because they were ‘weaker’ or ‘fragile.’ Over many years, these ideas would slowly evolve. Modernized versions are typically seen in literature. Fairy tales depict the male as a “knight in shining armor” and females as the “damsel in distress”. Kids today read about these expected roles, which just sets the next generation up for the same outcome.
“It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how real gender stereotyping was. Our coach played competitive sports all her life and is an advocate for girls’ sports. Did she even see what she was doing?”
“Everyone sees gender stereotyping as a normal thing, so no one actually cares about it or sees it as a problem anymore. We just shrug it off as if it’s like a normal thing — which it shouldn’t be,” says Kayla Cruz, a Lexington middle school student.
“Little girl” is used as an insult. People use it to describe something or someone who is weak or incapable, which implies that actual little girls are the same way. People should take that statement as a compliment instead of a negative remark, because “little girls” can be strong and powerful. People are so quick to judge others based on a general idea.
Women being displayed as strong female role models may seem like a positive development, but in reality such images can also put girls down. Characters like Wonder Woman or other superheroes are seen as larger-than-life and make girls feel like they have to be that exaggerated female character that came straight out of an action movie to achieve that kind of status. The reality of it is that girls don’t have super-strength or extraordinary powers, but they are human. When they get lost in that idea of magic, girls have to make a difference in normal everyday ways — like starting a girls’ soccer club.
“The reality of it is that girls don’t have super-strength or extraordinary powers, but they are human.”
Speaking as a girl myself, a lot of us are insecure about what others think of us. In a study by the Institute of Physics, 87% of girls and young women (ranging from 11–21 years old) reported feeling that girls are judged more on their appearance than their ability.
Gender stereotyping is not only evident in schools, but also in the adult world. According to an analysis by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American woman earns just 81% of what an average American man earns, and this imbalance is especially pronounced in the sports industry. Although women and men play many of the same professional sports, according to a 2019 analysis by Adelphi University, women earned a fraction of what men earned in pay in at least five of them.
Gender stereotyping happens everywhere–in school, at home, during extracurricular activities, and in public. When adults make assumptions based on gender, it’s difficult to stand up to their authority, especially in school settings.
Teachers and administrators need to be more aware of the problem. Setting up anonymous student check-ins for each class that address certain social issues such as gender stereotyping could help students reach out to adults in a safe and private place. Young people who are gender stereotyped outside of school should stand up for themselves, ideally by asking the offender to stop or telling someone else for support.
Girls and boys are not superhuman. We aren’t going to change the world with magic, but we are going to change these ideas by being ourselves. Together, we need to stand up to gender-stereotyping because it’s going to take all of us to stop it, especially in a country that declares everyone is created equal.
Madelyn Dinh is a part of the Kentucky Student Voice Team and Young Authors Greenhouse’s 2021 Education Justice Writing Cohort. She is also an 8th grade student at Leestown Middle School in Lexington
