We recently discovered a talk by Reshma Saujani who, through her nonprofit Girls Who Code, gets females interested in technology and brings them into the tech world.
In the talk she said, “Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. We’re taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A’s.” Boys, she points out, are habituated to take risk and are rewarded for it.
Tom Tozer and Bill Black pose for a portrait Monday, March 28, 2016 at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.“We’re raising our girls to be perfect, and we’re raising our boys to be brave.”
It got us to thinking. Bill has two boys; Tom has two girls. Did we raise them with a different set of expectations? Were the choices of Tom’s girls determined by what they knew they were going to be great at and Bill’s boys’ choices habituated to risk?
We don’t think so. We tried to teach our kids that they were capable and that all options were open. Yet we know that parenting is only part of a child’s growth. Culture is another big part. Does our society treat boys and girls differently? What does the world that teens inhabit tell them about potential, accomplishment and opportunity?
News reports, teacher expectations and peer perspectives all work to form our teens’ view of the world and their place in it. If you take a look at math and science majors in college, the representative makeup of members of Congress, distribution of corporate executives or the range of employees in the tech world, you will see a deficit of women.
It turns out that, in middle school, 74 percent of girls express interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), but when choosing a college major, only 0.4 percent of high school girls select computer science.
Women make up half of the U.S. workforce but hold just 25 percent of the jobs in technical or computing fields. The number of women in Congress is at its highest level – but only 20 percent. Women hold 4.5 percent of the CEO roles in Fortune 500 companies.
We’re not saying it’s all about CEOs, congressional leadership and math, science and technology. But it is about opportunity, recognition and support. In her talk, Reshma Saujani said, “At the fifth-grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science, so it’s not a question of ability. The difference is in how boys and girls approach a challenge.”
It turns out that girls are less likely than boys to try an approach or answer a question if they are uncertain. Women are far less likely than men to apply for a job when they don’t meet 100 percent of the qualifications.
As fathers, we can play an important role in our daughters’ lives by teaching them to grab an opportunity, take a calculated risk and resist fear of failing. We can teach our daughters to see their world in a broader way, to operate with confidence and to strive for growth not perfection – to be brave.
Tom Tozer and Bill Black are authors of “Dads2Dads: Tools for Raising Teenagers.” Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter at Dads2Dadsllc. Contact them at tomandbill@Dads2Dadsllc.com.