Tag Archives: gender

On Women’s day empower your daughters

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Since I was a child, I can remember being told that I needed to learn how to cook and iron to find a husband. Then I started to come across these oh so cool teen magazines telling young girls what to do to keep a man, to make a man happy or to keep him from leaving, and I always wondered if men magazines were educating them on how to treat a lady. Only to realize that nope ” Men will be men” and we need to suck it up and do what it takes to keep one. Society molds young women to be feeling inferior and insecure trying to tell them that if they don’t conform it is normal to be cheated on or mistreated.

And if you think about it, females throughout history have been beaten down, downtrodden, and been made to feel stupid. All females are at the effect of this history. It has been part of our society to consider females dumber. This bias has been passed down from generation to generation, and it doesn’t come only from the males, it comes from the females of the prior generations as well. They bought into the conditioning and passed it on to their children. Although it is not true that women are dumber, many societies believe that is true, and both sexes perpetuate that belief.

Teach your daughters to know their worth and to be the best version of themselves. Teach her that she can tame the dragon, splits the atom, owns the castle, and do it all in a really comfortable pair of shoes.  Let her grow up idolizing women who were called “bossy” and “difficult” and “unconventional,” without feeling like she should apologies for it. Let your daughters learn the value of being self-motivated, self-reliant, and self-loved. Allow your daughters to grow up without the subtle weight of being “just a girl” that is historically thrust upon us with a smile and a pat on the head.

Rosie by Tim Okamura