“Why do you think I don’t think I can do it?”
I went to my local public library over the weekend, a common trip for me and something I recommend that everyone put on their regular schedule. On the wall near the entrance, there was a display of children’s books about women in science. There were biographies of female scientists and books of girl-centric STEM projects. It was all very affirming and encouraging, clearly intended to tell girls that they could do anything they wanted in life. I bristled a little bit inside as I took it all in. I knew that one of my daughters would be hopping mad about the wall of girl-affirmation if she was with me.
When my daughters were young, I was a big believer in explicitely affirming their ability to be whatever they wanted to be. I thought that books celebrating women scientists, artists, and professionals were important, but my little girls weren’t all that impressed. One of my daughters was more than unimpressed. She was clearly uncomfortable with my gender affirmation, so I dialed it down (an aside to parents: if your child is uncomfortable with something you’re doing, you should probably knock it off unless it’s something really important like vaccinating them for measles).
It took many years for my daughter to become old enough to articulate what bothered her so much about shirts proclaiming “Girl Power!” and heavy-handed biographies of successful women. She didn’t like gender affirmation because it implied that someone thought that her gender meant that she couldn’t succeed, and she suspected that the person with doubts was supposed to be her. Why go to the trouble of writing a book about how a girl like her could be anything she wanted to be unless people thought she doubted herself? She didn’t doubt herself. She was sure that she could succeed, and she didn’t like the kernel of self-doubt that all of the affirmations placed in her head. I had the best of intentions, but she was insulted by the implication that I thought she needed such affirmation. Even as an eight-year-old, she found the very affirmation discouraging.
My anti-gender-affirmation daughter preferred that I giver her the encouragement of actually letting her do stuff rather than the hollow assurance that she could do stuff. It was better to catch bugs in the backyard and build with blocks than it was to read about fifty women who changed science or to wear a pink shirt proclaiming the awesomeness of her gender. Doing stuff gave her confidence and knowledge all at once; purchasing an affirming t-shirt or reading a shallow book did neither.
None of this is to say that every book about a successful woman was counterproductive in our household. Biographies about Marie Curie and Ruth Bader Ginsburg became particular favorites, so long as the focus of the book was on the important work that those women did. It’s difficult to write a fluff biography about a double Nobel Prize winner who revolutionized our understanding of the atom and opened the door to the sub-atomic world. Marie Curie’s work is so fascinating and inspiring that both boys and girls need to learn about it. Meanwhile, the rhetoric of Justice Ginsburg’s opinions and the importance of her earlier work for civil rights have changed our country for all Americans. Her decades of service matter to us all.
Yes, both Curie and Ginsburg are worth learning about as pioneering women, but their pioneering work would be worth learning about even if they weren’t women breaking into male-dominated fields. There are many other women to learn about for similar reasons, but for whatever reason Marie Curie and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were heroes in our home when my daughters were young, along with people like Albert Einstein, Alexander Hamilton, Walt Whitman, and Frederick Douglas. My anti-gender-affirmation daughter especially liked those two women because their work would have changed their fields whether it was done by a man or a woman. Books about them didn’t need to be segregated to a special shelf for girls seeking empowerment. Curie and Ginsburg were rightly celebrated first and foremost for the substance of their work, not for the fact that they were women while doing the work. My anti-gender-affirmation daughter found learning about the work of these women far more affirming than general girl-positivity.
I adore my anti-gender-affirmation daughter. She’s brilliant, wise, insightful, hardworking, and funny. I adore her, but, even though she gets a lot right on the topic, I confess that I think she’s at least a little wrong in her opposition to general affirmation about the potential of girls. Not every little girl grows up like she did, getting to play with string and circuit kits as a pre-schooler. My daughters had an MIT educated mother modeling what women can accomplish in STEM every day, while most girls grow up with the STEM fields gendered in practice even if they aren’t in theory. My daughters grew up in a weird household, which has been both a blessing and a curse for them over the years. Their unusual raising created a different perspective than most girls get. I know that for some girls, a book telling them that they can grow up to be a scientist may very well be a vital affirmation, even if it’s a message that confuses a girl like my daughter who never thought she needed such an affirmation.
There isn’t an easy answer about how to convince little girls interested in science or other non-traditional fields for women that they can grow up to do whatever they want in life. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a library display affirming that girls can grow up to be scientists, but I also think my daughter has a point about how different girls may take the message in different ways. Messages of girl power sometimes rebound in unexpected ways. If nothing else, some of the books on display need to be about the work women have done, not just about how they were women while doing the work.
