“Don’t you want to be a good girl, Gale?” was a question often asked of me throughout my childhood.
Growing up the eldest child in conservative Wisconsin in 1950s America, being a good girl entailed looking after the needs of my siblings, displaying faultless manners and keeping myself ‘neat and tidy’.
Yet, the concept of being a ‘good girl’ never really sat easily with me, and, also being encouraged by a grandmother who rebelled in her own, quiet way against the limitations placed upon women by the times, in my mind I resisted it. Imagine my horror, then, when in speaking to my own granddaughter, those same words once crossed my lips!
Gale Collins
Over the years, I’ve become a firm believer in needing to do more to encourage women to be seen, and heard, and speak their mind. Those of us in this camp must lead by example. It’s why, at the age of 66, I decided to take up blogging, in part to put a voice to a generation of women who are largely silent on the web and in part to have a forum to speak my mind.
Over the past week, two articles I stumbled across served as a reminder of why we need to keep encouraging women to be seen and heard, without fearing judgment. Elizabeth Farrelly, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says the world needs more “uppity women” as the headline proclaims – ladies who are not afraid to speak up, speak out and speak loud.
“Of course, we have plenty of women famed for their beauty and talent – actors and singers, comics and cooks, celebrity know-nothings and failed drug smugglers,” Farrelly writes. “But smart women who speak, eloquently, purposefully, publicly, are staggeringly few.”
And I suspect this is very much because of what can happen next. On the same day as Farrelly’s piece appeared, popular women’s community website mamamia.com.au posted a response to Internet trolls and their ongoing vicious and misogynistic abuse of the site’s female writers.
“For expressing our opinions in a civilised, respectful way, our writers and editors have been subject to threats of death and rape, threats against our children and families, the denigration of our partners, our sexual histories. And that’s just the start of it.
“We will continue to write and debate and discuss things that matter to us with all the women (and the vast, vast majority of men who stand united with us in their utter contempt for you) who come to [the site]…”
While bleak in their content, I get a lot of hope from reading articles such as these – they generate discussion and, if one women around the country acts differently because of them, and speaks their mind without fear, it’s one more empowered person.
To refer back to my starting point – and the start of the problem – we can begin the process as parents by changing the language we use to encourage and reward our girls. Instead of using the word “good”, try “articulate” or “passionate” or “strong” or “capable”… and allow them to be great.
The Queen and I 