Girls’ schools often pride themselves on being a progressive, innovative hub for the empowerment and education of girls across the UK. You need not look further than our very own GDST. Founded in 1872 by four pioneering women, it has stood the test of time and continues to expand and change lives. The GDST also prides itself on being ‘Girls First’, aiming to uplift girls and young women academically, emotionally, and socially. This role is more essential than ever in creating a society of young women who are instilled with the idea that they can succeed because of their gender, not in spite of it.
However, a recent GDST-wide survey found that many pupils would prefer to not be addressed as ‘girls’. So how does the wide use of ‘girls’ when referring to students impact this empowerment of young women and how can a balance be struck within an all-girls organisation?
The power of language is a concept we have long been taught in classes. It is highlighted in English as we analyse poetry, in History as we examine speeches, even in the Sciences as we interpret research conclusions. When our education on language often fails, however, is when we encounter it in the real world. The words we use, and the words others use around us, affect our mindsets, our viewpoints, and our opinions. As girls, our roles are so regularly determined and influenced by the people around us – and the way we are addressed is a key example of that.
The use of ‘girls’ as a term has been used as demeaning, condescending, and patronising in many contexts for so long. In the school environment, when a teacher is trying to cajole a rowdy class of, yes, girls, they likely don’t mean anything by it except as a general way to talk to everyone. And if schools existed in a vacuum, away from the outside world of ‘lad culture’ and workplace misogyny, then this truly would be fine. But we don’t exist in that happy feminist bubble which many of us so wish could be the real world.
In the everyday world, women’s authority and positions are undermined by the use of the word ‘girl’. Politicians Nicky Morgan and Amber Rudd were patronised by the paparazzi in 2015 as they left 10 Downing Street, with a photographer shouting ‘Morning, girls!’ While this comment wasn’t overtly sexist, it immediately diminishes the role of these women in their careers by suggesting that they are little more than children. This doesn’t just exist in the workplace, either. The England women’s football team (one of many examples) are regularly referred to as ‘girls’ by commentators and interviewers. This subtle choice of language reveals the pervasive nature of the patriarchy, allowing women and their achievements to be minimized. Furthermore, the continued use of the word on grown women highlights our society’s obsession with keeping women young and making youthfulness the conventional beauty standard. The beauty industry’s constant push for anti-aging, anti-wrinkle, anti-everything serums and creams or Hollywood’s inability to cast women over 40 for leading roles tells us what is deemed ‘desirable’ in our culture.
But how does this affect GDST pupils, who are actually girls? Shouldn’t we try and reclaim the word that is so often used to tear down our accomplishments and use it with strength? Yes and no. There is a stark difference between addressing someone individually as a girl or proudly referring to a school as all-girls and using the word to address a group from a position of power. While the intention is never to be patronising, there are times when the use of a word so often used to degrade can come across negatively. So often brushed off for being too emotional or melodramatic, teenage girls have an uncanny understanding of the social dynamics constantly surrounding them. This hyperawareness comes with an intense perception of the societal pressures that come with being a girl and the effects of them in our everyday lives. At girls’ organisations, these should be leaned into and talked about, rather than dismissed because ‘that’s what the real world is like’.
Furthermore, in a wonderfully accepting community such as the GDST, considerations should be made for students who don’t identify as female and use pronouns other than she/her. The desire to support girls does not, and never should, come hand in hand with excluding other genders from the equation. Once again, we return to the issue of context. Talking in a school wide assembly about feminism and how to uplift other girls is one thing, while directly misgendering a student is entirely another. One holds the use of the word girls with pride, while the other invalidates a person’s identity in a place where they should feel safe.
The solution to this problem is simple and just requires some conscious effort on the part of educators. They must find a way to address students that feels comfortable to them – folks, everyone, y’all, the list could go on. For many students, their objection to the word ‘girls’ doesn’t lie with any shame or embarrassment of their gender, but with the connotations that can follow the word around.
GDST schools do a brilliant job at uplifting girls and recognising strength in femininity and girlhood is crucial. However, it is also crucial to recognise the barriers students will face due to their gender when they enter the work force and teaching them to set standards on how to be treated and resist patriarchal undertones which exist all around us starts with language. Even more importantly, it starts with respecting the wishes and voices of the girls speaking out.
Bibliography:
Institute of Physics. It’s Different for Girls: the Influence of Schools. Oct. 2012, https://www.iop.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/its-different-for-girls.pdf.
SJ;, Pearson N;Braithwaite R;Biddle. “The Effectiveness of Interventions to Increase Physical Activity among Adolescent Girls: A Meta-Analysis.” Academic Pediatrics, U.S. National Library of Medicine, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25441655/.
“Stop Calling Women ‘Girls’. It’s Either Patronising or Sexually Suggestive.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 July 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/08/stop-calling-women-girls-its-either-patronising-or-sexually-suggestive.
