My First Rant: Why Can’t Women Keep Up with Men? Try the Curse of the Good Girl
Women, and our struggle for workplace equality, seem to be having a moment. Seems like everywhere you look lately, there’s a story about how we don’t seek or win enough money for tech start-ups; how we still face sexism in the workplace; how there are not enough of us speaking as experts in national media; how we’re too nice to ask for lots of money; and how there are not enough of us willing to “behave like arrogant, self-aggrandizing jerks.”
Hand-wringing ensues. It’s sexism. It’s change that’s slow to come. It’s racism. It’s socialization. And yet one thing is very clear: with the exception of Salon’s Rebecca Traister, almost no one is making more than a passing connection to girls.
I’m feeling pretty crabby about this (welcome to my first ever rant!). I’m all for these articles, and I’m grateful that some of the writers quoted me.
Yet despite a growing mountain of evidence that women are still slipping in our high heels, the party line on girls is that they’re doing just fine in their soccer cleats. It’s boys – riddled with attention problems, new body image woes and learning crises — who need rescuing.
Let’s be clear. I’m not into to suffering contests, or zero sum games. Boys need help, too. But I can’t stand the argument that girls are flying high, powered by Title IX, mothers who boycotted Barbie and Girl Scout cookie sales. Because it’s just not true.
To be fair, girls do look great on paper. They graduate from high school in higher numbers, get better grades, and hold more leadership positions than boys. Look more closely at what the data doesn’t measure, and the picture gets complicated: too many girls lack an inner resume: the skills and permission to assert their opinions, promote their own talents and take healthy risks that might result in failure.
Many girls aspire to a version of selfhood that puts a psychological glass ceiling on their potential to succeed. They suffer from what I call the Curse of the Good Girl: the pressure to be liked by everyone, generous to a fault and flawless at everything you do. Good Girls are taught to be modest and teeth gnashingly friendly. They are not so good at self-advocacy, saying no, putting themselves out there and dealing with constructive criticism.
Why aren’t we looking at girlhood? Could it be that people see American girls as people whose primary preoccupations – when they’re not pulling their straight A’s — are Facebook, the latest sale, and the newest episode of Glee? The Curse of the Good Girl is putting down roots in girls’ souls from the earliest ages. It’s putting a cap on their career potential long before they have their first job interviews.
Too many girls begin speaking in class with the ritualized phrase, “I’m not sure if this is right, but….” They make their sentences sound like questions to sand the edges off their convictions. Ask a teenage girl to name her strengths in front of her peers, and you’re likely to get silence, nervous laughter or a barely audible response. Then there’s mistakes and failure. Girls aspiring to be Good don’t do so well when they screw up. They personalize criticism, believing it means people don’t like them anymore.
These are the girls who graduate from college and don’t negotiate raises, flag down the same venture capital, own their strengths in job interviews and take the risks that result in business success. To be sure, the Curse of the Good Girl isn’t the only reason why women are slipping. There’s institutional sexism, racism and homophobia. Oh, and that small detail about women in heterosexual partnerships doing most of the housework and childcare, not to mention the villainy women suffer when they put work on par with family (explored brilliantly here by Kate Harding).
Around middle school, girls are known to lose gobs of self-esteem. It’s a reverse butterfly process where the fearlessness of girlhood is consumed wholesale by the ruthless self-consciousness of adolescence. This metamorphosis was made famous by Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia, and Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown’s Meeting at the Crossroads. To look at the phenomenon of women struggling at work would be to think some second epic change strikes young women down between the blinding success of high school and their first jobs.
No such luck. What’s happening here has been in the works for years. And until we spend time working with girls on developing the real world muscles they need to succeed on par with men, we’ll be writing a whole lot of articles.
How enlightening……! I have struggled with this much of my life, especially growing up in the South…this inability to speak up and fear that I may be seen in a bad light has held me back, in fact, contributed to my history in battling anorexia/bulimia (all well now)There is MUCH freedom in speaking up and not caring that others may be upset that I did…so LIBERATING!! Thanks for your book, a friend shared with me a bit about it… I look forward to reading….
Rachel,
I completely agree with you — Good girlism goes back to childhood, from all those messages taught by our mothers such as, don’t upset the apple cart, don’t complete with a boy, be a good girl because good girls get rewarded, and bad girls get punished. As a result of my mother’s messages, I spent most of my life being a good girl. Here’s the good news: It’s never too late to be a bad girl. What I’ve learned as an adult is that good girls get nowhere, and bad girls get to live life in the fast lane.
I also notice this trait and it frustrates me because it seems like women holding themselves back. I never fit this image, and I got lots of grief for it as a result when I was growing up — not from the boys but from the other girls. THEY were the ones who were more likely to be catty about clothes, body image and put pressure on each other. As such, I have a hard time having any sympathy for them now as it is hard to oppress people who continually buy into it and allow it. Sure, the magazine articles are all geared toward pleasing your man and losing weight and junk like that but maybe if women would stop buying them in droves, people would stop making them.
Good rant and as someone who has struggled with “good girl” issues for almost 50 years, including during graduate school and on the career path, I agree with a lot. But I also think that there is something else going on with the current generation of K-12 kids. There are girls in my 1st grader’s class who talk about getting married and having “mini jobs,” as decorators, real estate agents. At 7 and 8, they are already well versed in designer clothes and looking “pretty” to get a boyfriend. This New York Times article talks about tween girls at the make-up counter and the number of middle schoolers who are wearing foundation! http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/fashion/29tween.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes I think that “So Sexy So Soon” is also at play. I grew up in the 1960s and fought as a 12-year-old for the right to wear pants to school so that I could climb the jungle gym at recess without being self-conscious about boys trying to see my underwear. Now I see way too many girls wearing ballet flats at recess (which look great but are very hard to run and climb in). The boys are running and throwing balls around and the girls are sitting in the corner. If anything, their ideas about gender roles seem much narrower than the ones I grew up with forty years ago.
I’m unclear as to which backs up your claims. Specifically, while you cite that girls look, “good on paper,” an, “inner resume,” is lacking. How is this measured? Where does this come from? Moreover, you claim girls (in comparison to boys) make statements such as, “too many girls begin speaking in class with the ritualized phrase, “I’m not sure if this is right, but….” They make their sentences sound like questions to sand the edges off their convictions.” But, again, where’s the evidence for this?
Despite the overwhelming success of girls, “on paper,” where is the evidence that back up your claims that such success is, “just not true?”
Well, the “inner resume” is a metaphor of sorts for the things she lists after: “the skills and permission to assert their opinions, promote their own talents and take healthy risks that might result in failure.” So while obviously an “inner resume” can’t be quantified, the fact that girls are, in general, less assertive, etc. has been demonstrated through numerous scholarly investigations… I won’t link to them all (if you’re really interested some simple searches should turn them up) but if you’d specifically like to see one source for the socialized differences in male and female patterns of conversation, here’s a famous paper:
http://www.pa-awis.org/useful/tannen.pdf
Thanks for this comment reply — I appreciate the resource.
The evidence comes out almost every time I ask one of my high school students to speak.
More women complaining about the problems they created: http://goo.gl/OxDl
I’m here from Feministing too, and this post really speaks to me. Another thing I’ve noticed r.e. the curse of the Good Girl and language is the urge to insert “just” into all kinds of statements that don’t really need it. For example:
“I’ll just have a small coffee.” vs. “I’ll have a small coffee.” I’ve noticed the first one is a lot more prevalent among my female friends than my male friends. It functions as another way of using language to minimize their desires and make them less threatening.
Yes!!! “Just” is huge. I “JUST” wanted to say….. etc. I do it, too. We talk about it a lot at the Girls Leadership Institute. Thanks for your comment.
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Good article.. I definitely suffer from the good girl curse myself, and know that it has held me back in the past. I’m also a nanny for a very strong-willed and outspoken 8 year old girl, and find myself constantly trying to get her to tone that down – but I don’t want her to grow-up being obsessed with pleasing people. It’s really difficult to draw the line between letting her assert herself and stopping bad behaviour.
Rachel,
Thanks for the blog. I am always happy to hear what you are thinking about. Yes some girls can be ‘too good.’ Some can be ‘highly individualistic.’ Some definitely listen to the different drum. I certainly reached a point when I started college, where I was willing to ‘sacrifice’ requirements for the knowledge and experience I felt would really be worthwhile, and as luck-fate would have it, I graduated anyway.
I strongly feel that women are the transmitters of values and culture. Money is important, and , yet, at the same time those greedy, arrogant, two-timing Goldman Sachs executive and plenty of others with outrageous, cruelty-inspired and illegally or illegitimately made fortunes are not the kind of people we need more of. Gates is perhaps a good role model, the self-made man who took a risk and now pays back into society by funding educational initiatives.
Yes, you have to ask for the money you want. That’s not easy, but anyone who tries it gets better at it over time. You have to find some way to do some research to see what the going rate is for men, for women and figure out what your worth and them maybe add another ten thousand dollars to combat the ‘good girl’ stuff, and be open to negotiate.
I’m glad that I learned from my mother to keep my own money separate, it definitely works for me in my family – i.e. to make my own decisions about spending and saving and to take into account my family’s needs and my husband’s contribution.
My daughter is strong willed, knows what classes she values in high school and what requirements she feels are off in left field for her. I’m glad she’s not perfect. Sometimes it’s hard to be up against a girl who thinks and to give her the appropriate freedom she can handle and learn from. It was much harder between age 11 and 14. Rachel and Simone have definitely helped us out. Thanks for the opportunity to respond.
Martha
I also hadn’t made the connection between the persistent problems women face in the working world and how many of us are conditioned to behave as the “Good Girl” when we’re younger. (Me definitely being one of them!)
Thanks for the thoughtful rant and for giving me something to think about!
Hey Christina — yes, I think a ton of what we face as adult women was learned in girlhood and, more to the point, in our social relationships. I write about this at length in the Curse of the Good Girl. Thanks for your voice here.
I guess none of you met my daughter. “Good girl”? Hah! She snaps at everyone she meets, whether it’s teacher, parent, or peer. She demands more than her share of everything, and insists that she doesn’t care one whit what anyone thinks of her. She puts effort into only those pursuits that she finds personal value in, whether they’re required for graduation or not. She plays every situation for personal advantage, by her own measure.
Needless to say, she’s not thought of very highly at school. She has few friends, gets A’s and F’s in her classes, and by all accounts spends a lot of her time shouting.
I guess she’ll be a success, if she ever manages to graduate high school.
Personally, I hope she learns to treat people like human beings soon. The attributes she’s displaying might be the ones that will get her money and power, but I don’t think they’ll earn her happiness and respect.
Well, if she’s a typical adolescent, she’s trying to negotiate a lot of change and a lot of new awareness of how the world works and juggling the pressures that gender lays on top of those…and it *does* tend to make one ornery. If it makes you feel any better, she sounds like a pretty normal teenager and one that’s not going to take a lot of crap from people telling her what to do…which can be a problem in the teenage years but will be a great asset when she is an adult! I think I was a lot like your daughter and I got a lot of flack from what seemed like EVERYONE for not being the proper good girl (though I learned to fake when I had too…women learn a LOT of faking skills through socialization when we see that our true feelings and real reactions are scorned and chastised) but I’ve felt that that assertiveness and being able to listen to my own head and gut were key in helping me avoid peer pressure, dismiss some of the aspects of toxic femininity, and to make decisions about my education, my career, my relationships, my work that were right for ME. I’m about to get a PhD in science after going back to grad school after getting some work experience and I feel I have benefited immensely from not following the cultural script. Let your daughter know that you love her and support her and give her room to sort it all out…she sounds fabulous!
I’m watching my lovely, intelligent 8 year old daughter just beginning to feel that it’s better to clip her wings than to fly high, and it breaks my heart. Thank you for your work and helping us all identify these issues and giving us a framework and a vocabulary to try and undo the curse of the good girl. Looking forward to more rants.
Thanks, Jenny. I’m glad it helped. And ranting does feel kind of good! KEep in touch with the Girls Leadership Institute, too — we’re offering more and more programs for girls your daughter’s age. Thanks again for your comment.
I found this article through feministing.com also. As a high school senior, I have recently lived everything you talked about. I automatically preface my sentences with “I think…” and “It might be…” Though I am a naturally more assertive person, I have still been conditioned to use less aggressive language. Recently I attended a conference for women in science, and the keynote speaker said that she learned that men generally say they know something when they’re 10% sure, while women say they think something is true when they’re 90% sure. It seems like this is definitely the fault of how girls are taught to speak.
Thanks for adding that point, Charity — I definitely would include raising your hand when you have the right answer as a “Good Girl” curse issue. It narrows your sphere of risk to the point where there are few leaps that can be made. I’m always thinking about ways to get girls to take risks intellectually. I appreciate that statistic. Thanks for your comment!
Amen! The soft-pedalling of our speech and self-censoring is something we need to examine and just stop…people will get used to it once it’s the “norm.” When I’ve taught classes, I’ve seen the same thing and one of my favorite female science bloggers talks about it here: http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2007/12/aggressive-women.html
Read the comments too…good input on this topic including this one:
“I’ve noticed sometimes that men…aren’t used to hearing, for example, a simple statement of fact from a female speaker; the women in their lives (such as family members) package anything they say to the guy in a lot of caretaking speech about how important whatever he said was, there’s also this fact, and what does he think? Anything coming from a woman without all the cushioning gets attacked as aggression, because the man presumes it is his right to be pandered to in such a manner by all women.”
Good article (or rant, really), but I think generalizing and stereotyping all girls isn’t helping anything. For starters, as a girl, I don’t pull straight A’s. I get A’s, B’s and even C’s sometimes. Many girls don’t have perfect grades, so holding all girls up to that standard can create some self-esteem issues in a girl reading this article. Also, most girls in my English class express their opinions in a clear way and don’t hold back on what they have to say about a specific topic. I do understand what you’re saying though because more boys than girls speak during English discussions. That just may be that there are more boys than girls in my class though….
So true that generalizing is always a mistake. Thanks for this point. Just want to add that Good Girls come in lots of shapes and sizes. I certainly wasn’t a straight A student in high school but I had a ton of Good Girl issues. I didn’t mean to imply that *I’m* holding girls to that standard — more that they often hold themselves to it, and that our culture expects the kind of goodness or perfection in girls that manifests as straight A’s. thanks for your comment!
I agree in many ways and can see why it is a problem to feel the need to “sand off” the edges of our convictions but at the same time I think there is something good to be said about this humility. Maybe men could use a little more of it.
I found this through Feministing.com and wanted to thank you for your insight. Excellent article, Rachel!