Becoming a Bosslady: 3 thoughts on empowering the next generation of women.
“Bossladies.” Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Michelle Obama, Melinda Gates, my mom. These are all people I think of when I hear that word.
But when society casts a role for the word “Bosslady,” it’s not associated with intelligent, impactful women. Rather, the word “bosslady” is often associated with phrases like, “that women’s lib crap,” the “MiLlEnNiAl SnOwFlAkEs,” or “a failed movement.” This is because our expectations of a boss and our expectations of a woman don’t usually collide. For that matter, neither do our expectations of leadership and women. Or women and tech.
Thankfully that’s changing!
Women have more recognition and resources than ever before, especially in STEM fields. It’s thanks to the generations of absolute bossladies that fought to give women more presence in science and tech fields.
I’m so grateful for the bossladies who did fight because it’s their voices that have allowed me to pursue my passions in tech now. For the past 9 months, I’ve been an innovator in The Knowledge Society (TKS). TKS is a program for high schoolers who want to use emerging technologies to solve the world’s biggest problems.
Since joining TKS I’ve been able to work with some amazing bossladies in projects with emerging tech, entrepreneurship, and leadership. It’s been an awesome source of positive female role models, and at this point, I would 10000% consider myself a bosslady. 😎
But I know I wouldn’t have said that 9 months ago. So I think it’s important to examine why I didn’t then, why I do now, and what that process of empowering girls to be bossladies looks like. (If there even is one single process.)
So to be clear: This isn’t a how-to guide to become the ultimate pokemon evolution of a woman. It’s not me bragging about how much I think women are neato complete-o. Neither is it a prediction that in ten years there won’t even be men because we’ll have figured out how to self-reproduce by then.
This article is to continue the discussion about women, leadership, and the cultures of the emerging tech industry with my 3 thoughts on becoming a bosslady.
1. Building Bomb Relationships With Other Women 💣
“I’m not like other girls” -me in 7th grade
The staple, “I’m not like other girls” mindset, is the figurative sexism Lego that every feminist steps on at some point.
For some people, it’s the genuine belief that other girls are stupid, shallow, dramatic, or insert whatever negative trait you’ve assigned to every girl around you. For others, it’s the conscious decision to reject other women or things that are conventionally feminine in a desperate attempt to be seen as the single “diamond in the rough” to male figures.
Now just to clarify, this isn’t to say that women who don’t like conventionally feminine things hate other women. Or that they’re only trying to win the approval of men. That’s a very wack mindset in and of itself.
I just want to point out that trying to differentiate yourself as better than other women based on your own arbitrary-as-heck standards of femininity doesn’t make you a critical thinker, it just makes you critical.
Building good relationships with other women is such an important thing to do for anyone, but especially for women in STEM. Having a network of women is so beneficial because in addition to having people to advocate for you as a woman, you also get to make meaningful connections with incredible, impactful, and intelligent ladies.
For me, this mindset was a huge roadblock in building relationships with those same incredible, impactful, intelligent ladies because I was too caught up in trying to establish myself as “KiNdA qUirKy.” Because of this, I never actually took the time to get to know these women beyond my assumptions of them as “girly.” Which of course, was all based on my: (say it with me kids) arbitrary standards of femininity.
(Feel free to take a big swig of water every time I say “arbitrary standards of femininity.” 😁)
The engine of this mindset is projecting your own insecurities about femininity onto other girls. Then you can distance yourself from all the stereotypes that you believe are true. This can give you false confidence, which admittedly feels pretty good if you have a lot of insecurities.
But it’s ultimately really destructive when your faith in yourself is dependent on how you perceive your own womanliness because again, it’s all based on your arbitrary standards of femininity. (Swig time!)
The best thing I did to start building better relationships with other women was to actively try to let go of these expectations of femininity. I started to embrace what I liked regardless of how it was viewed as feminine or not. Once I let go of those expectations I had for myself, I was able to let go of them for other women too.
Here are some action items to start building bomb relationships with other women:
Action Items
- Use Socratic questioning to find what your core insecurities are, and then make a list to prove why those beliefs are wrong. This is advice a female mentor gave me and it’s helped me become kinder to myself, and has allowed me to help other women do the same.
- Pick 3 things you love about specific women in your life. At first, this can be really difficult. (Especially for women you dislike.) But the more you practice, the more positive your attitudes about other women become, and the better your relationships with them will be.
2. Empowerment? more like EmpoWOMANt!
^^ I hope you appreciate the pun.
Empowerment is an idea that’s talked about all the time, and for good reason. It’s so important to make sure that, as women, we’re spreading the momentum from our own goals + successes to help other women achieve theirs.
So this is me empowering you to empower others, by sharing what I’ve learned about empowerment.
Encouraging girls to go after opportunities.
I think encouraging girls to take opportunities is one of the simplest ways to empower them.
Often girls are deprived of opportunities starting in grade school, where teachers don’t encourage them to enter hackathons, join STEM clubs, or apply to programs like TKS.
Another part of the problem here is that girls are scared to take opportunities they don’t feel like they’re qualified for.
Women working at HP applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100% of the qualifications listed for the job. Men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60% of the job requirements.
-Hewlett-Packard
Young girls and women adopt the mindset that if you don’t feel like you know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t do it.“It” being whatever opportunity or risk that will remain untaken.
But there are two flaws with this thinking:
- Learning through experience, and trial + error is by far the best way to learn, and it’s an especially crucial part of STEM. Assuming that because you don’t know what you’re doing now means that you shouldn’t take the opportunity limits your thinking.
- Often times women underestimate what they know. How you feel like you’re qualified doesn’t always actually reflect your real abilities.
These two beliefs in combination with each other snowball into a big ol’ chunky piece of self-doubt. The thing about self-doubt is that its existence in someone implies that they believe confidence and imperfection are mutually exclusive.
When in reality, confidence comes from having faith in your abilities despite them being imperfect. Part of empowering others is making yourself a role model to be imperfect.
Now speaking of imperfection, let’s talk for a second about the culture that allows my ladies in STEM fields to feel superior to other women who don’t pursue careers in science.
Female empowerment in no way just applies to STEM. We need to stop judging women who choose different careers and rather work to create an environment where women from different fields can work together to make an impact.
Action Items:
- Try something you don’t think you’ll be good at and share your learnings with some women who inspire you (for me I always share with my mom 😊). It can be anything: cooking, coding, normal social interaction, whatever makes you kind of nervous to try, do it!
- Read this article about making mistakes.
- Text a girl you know with an opportunity you think she would enjoy. For me, I encouraged two of my friends to apply to TKS and they both got in!
3. Boarding the leader-ship ⛵️
Ahoy, mateys! Let’s talk about female leadership!
Everyone has different expectations for a female leader. My expectations of a female leader when I was younger was a woman who was loud, and kind of a jerk with no sense of humor. (I guess baby Emily had some issues with authority?)
From my tone, you can probably guess that now, at the ripe old age of 14, I perceive women's leadership very differently.
Because when I was younger, I thought that women in leadership were in charge because they knew everything. Now I know that leaders are leaders because they know to surround themselves with people who know the things they don’t.
After all, the idea you don’t have is the voice you haven’t heard. So the best thing female leaders can do, in addition to just being a bosslady, is to prop up other women for leadership who have different experiences.
How they prop up other women varies greatly on them individually. But I see a few ways female leaders can empower other women for leadership:
- By being a role model, not by adhering to wack social expectations or arbitrary standards of femininity, but by being an authentic presence to begin with.
- By using your resources and privilege to propel disadvantaged women into opportunities they wouldn’t normally get.
- By never implying that you need to become in any way “palatable” or “one of the guys” in order to reach a position of leadership. Especially for women in STEM where “bro culture” is driving force that discourages women away from opportunities.
Some examples of women who do these things really well are Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai, and Melinda Gates. I already mentioned these 3 women before in the article because they really champion these points.
As far as the point of being a role model, Michelle Obama is the person who comes to my mind, because she is such a role model. Not just as a person, but as an advocate for girls' education with her ‘Let Girls Learn’ initiative. I think she’s an especially great example because she rejected standard expectations of who she should be. As people picked her apart for her race, her body type, or the clothes she wore, it didn’t stop her. She still advocated for racial justice. She still stood for a healthier nation. She still served looks in the oval office. She was still the type of person I look up to.
Malala Yousafzai is my pick for the second point. She’s been fighting for girl’s rights to education since she was 11. Because of her, Pakistan passed an education rights bill ensuring all children have access to free education. The Malala Fund, which she founded in 2013, is working to get every single girl in school. But even though her own efforts have made such a big impact, she also uses her platform as an activist to give voice to other marginalized girls and women. That is bosslady leadership to a T.
For the third point- Melinda Gates. She’s such an important advocate for women in STEM. She does a great job of rejecting the notion that women in STEM should be “one of the guys,” through her actions, and her mentality. I particularly love this quote from her:
“You will succeed because of who you are, not in spite of it. And in the meantime, surround yourself with people who believe in you and will bring out the best in you.”
^^MAD FACTS. Melinda honestly said it better than I ever could.
Action Items:
- Check out this article about leadership.
- Every day this week, look for opportunities to compliment other women on their leadership qualities. Whether it’s the great attitude she had about a last-minute presentation, the kindness she showed her peers that day, the confidence she had when she was answering a question, whatever. Look for ways you can build her up by encouraging her at what she’s good at.
3.5 Why does any of this matter??
“Investing in women’s lives is an investment in sustainable development, in human rights, in future generations — and consequently in our own long-term national interests.” — Liya Kebede
Liya really said it best. Investing in women is empowerment. Because empowered women don’t just empower other women, they empower everyone.
So with that in mind, let’s take a look at what we’ve discussed:
Takeaways:
- You can be a bosslady right now- you don’t need to wait until you feel like you’ve earned it.
- Bossladies get self-esteem through esteemable action - You can see yourself as a leader by taking steps to help other women succeed.
- There’s no one way to be a bosslady - You don’t have to take routes with conventional career choices, conventional femininity, or conventional expectations of who you should be to succeed.
So yeah, Bossladies are dope 😎.
By now you’ve probably picked up on the fact that bossladies are pretty cool. But everything in this article is just my own opinion. There are billions of other women with billions of other perspectives!
That’s why it’s so crucial to have these discussions. So that we can enable others with unique viewpoints to make an impact. So hopefully after reading this article, and drinking some respect-women juice, you can go and discover more ways to do just that.
My name is Emily Delp and I’m a 14 y/o innovator at The Knowledge Society. I’m really passionate about emerging technologies and the world’s biggest problems. If you want to contact me, feel free to reach out via my LinkedIn.
