I have an idea, but I need your help.
This site is very popular and I get a lot of emails from young girls asking for advice. A pretty decent amount of these are more or less complaints about not getting to play in a sport or being discriminated against based on their gender. Most women have encountered this in their lives at some point, correct?
So what are our options? In my mind, we have 3 choices: complain, educate or just do nothing. I’m certain we can all agree that doing nothing isn’t a solution. So that leaves us with…
Complaining
Where does that get us? Actually, complaining can work in many cases. Remember the 14 year old girl that was upset there were no female hockey characters depicted in her video game? Well she complained and look where it got her. Complaining does work. It requires finesse and just plain being nice about your complaint, but it does work sometimes.
But what about when it doesn’t?
Education
I have said many times before that education is the key to changing gender bias. So how do we educate? Too many times when we think “educate” we associate that with school. I’m not talking about creating social programs or adding to the curriculum. I’m talking about lifelong one-to-one teaching each other to see gender as something that makes us different but does not divide us. And it certainly doen’t mean that female = weak.
So here are my thoughts. When people are learning something new, they often look for examples. Most folks are visual and like videos or images. When they can picture what we are trying to teach them, they education is more likely to stick.
So what can we do?
I’d like to see Girls Can’t WHAT? be an educational tool for women everywhere. Let them come and search for topics and learn from the experiences of others as well as see proof that women are playing professional football, becoming firefighters, riding motorcycles and skydiving.
The Share Your Story section has become wildly popular on here. I get tons of submissions every week and I generally have to sift through to pick out the best ones because there are so many. I love these stories and I’d like to see them continue, but with a little added twist. How about some more videos or photos of women doing extraordinary things…things women aren’t likely to be seen doing. Let’s create an archive of “teaching materials” that can be shared with family, friends, teachers, camp counselors, etc.
This is where you come in…
Do you know of a great video, interview, web site or any other truly inspiring resource that can feature on the Girls Can’t WHAT? site? Please send it my way or add it to the share your story section so I can post it. I know there’s way more information out there than I will ever have time to research. Can you help me?
Another way you can help is by sharing the Girls Can’t WHAT? site with other women you know that would benefit from a little encouragement or who might have a great story or video to share with us. The search function on Girls Can’t WHAT? is really super. Here are a few sample searches you can use to find information to share: Football, Wrestler, Firefighter, Drummer, Military
Want to be interviewed? Email me. I’m open to any and all ideas. Let’s hear from you…what else would you like to see on here? Leave your ideas in the comments below.
