It's Time to Move Beyond “Girl Power”
Because girl power won't smash patriarchy on its own
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When I met Jo-Ann Finkelstein over Zoom last week, I asked her whether sexism was over, now that we once again have a woman running for president.
She laughed.
“It’s just starting,” she said.
No matter how much progress we have made, our rights are still being rolled back, she says in her new book, “Sexism & Sensibility: Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls in the Modern World.”
From the end of Roe, to the hollowing of equal pay protections, to the onslaught of cultural messages that girls and women are still only as valuable as their subservience to men, sexism is a powerful force to battle against, and to teach our kids to recognize.
“Girl power is a a wonderful way to help girls embody respect for the female gender and to embody a can-do attitude,” Finkelstein told me, “but it doesn't prepare them for the unfair experiences that they are going to encounter, and that they will internalize to some degree.”
“I think a lot of even feminist parents don't really know how to go beyond girl power,” she said.
Her new book is a master class in how to talk about sexism — from talking about sex ed, to sexual harassment, to social media use, and beyond.
(I’ve edited our conversation for length and clarity).
When we first started talking about doing an interview, back in mid-July, Kamala Harris wasn’t yet running for president. So what is Harris is up against now? What would you tell her, and tell us?
She knows this probably better than anybody, but she needs to be prepared for an onslaught of criticism about things that have nothing to do with the presidency. Her clothing, her hair. Anything that could undermine her credibility.
At the same time, I think there's nothing like representation. This is borne out in the research. Girls who see women in high-profile positions or running for high-profile offices say that they're much more likely to be involved in politics. And this goes beyond identity. Women in office are more likely to represent things like childcare and equal pay and affordable housing.
My almost-9-year-old is watching the news like crazy now that Kamala is running. But you write about how “gender policing” – criticizing everything about her – can also be a block to getting girls involved with politics. What should parents do about it when they see it?
You're pointing out to your little girls, to your teenagers, and to your kids all genders: “Look what's happening. They're not focusing on her policies. They're focusing on her gender, and they're trying to make you not like her because of her gender.”
When women try to be big, when they have the audacity to put themselves in the public eye, they get punished for it. But women are going to have her back, and we can't let that deter us.
It’s to show them that the culture is broken, not them.
You write, “As parents, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to nurturing our children's innate sense of justice, while preparing them to live in the world as it truly exists. And we're faced with hundreds of little choices about what to share, what to explain, what to ignore, in in the name of expediency.”
Were there particular themes that you heard with your clients when it comes to talking about the sexism that they or their kids were experiencing?
One major thing was the lack of healthy entitlement. We think of entitlement as a bad thing – as expecting too much.
But over and over in my practice, I saw girls who didn't have a healthy sense of entitlement. They didn't have enough entitlement to speak, entitlement to resist, entitlement to be competitive, entitlement to money.
Boys grow up believing in their voice, believing that they deserve respect, and that they deserve money. Those three things in particular we really just sort of overlook for girls.
We don't say “You don't deserve it,’” but the absence of talking about those things, gives that message.
My hope is that — if we've been talking about this in ways that help them understand that there's something wrong with the culture and not with them, they'll be less likely to internalize it.
More young people are expressing gender fluid identities. How does that change the way that a parents should talk about sexism? Is there a difference here?
I think they're really related. Kids are breaking out of these molds. They're showing us that this really binary way of thinking about gender hasn't been good for doing the developmental work of identity, of figuring out who you are.
Sexism is based on this binary, and people are getting push-back because they're breaking out this binary gender. They are facing a form of sexism because people want you back in your lane. So I think that the parent piece is really getting in there and helping kids deal with sexism and gender bias. It’s crucial.
You say that the single most helpful thing we can do as parents is to examine our own biases. So we aren't parenting from a place of fear.
What happens when parents do come from a place of fear, whether it's around gender identity, or whether it's around addressing these complicated issues related to sexism more broadly?
I think they’ve really stopped seeing who their child is. So you have this very rigid idea of how girls should be how boys should be, and you're projecting that onto your kid. A lot of times there's a fear comes from their own internalized sexism.
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Let’s get into how to manage cultural messages in the media.
You talk about watching MasterChef Junior with your daughter and noticing the bias in the judges’ attitudes between the girls and the boys.
What’s the strategy when you're watching something with them on TV or in movies? Do you say, “Oh, that was like a really sexist thing that just happened?” Or do you have a different kind of conversation?
So in the first season, she was like, “I want the girl to win.” And she was really excited. And the girl did not win.
And then the next year, the girl did not win. And I could just feel her hopelessness, year after year.
Finally I was like, What am I doing? She is asking for this. She wants to know what's going on.
So I told her, “Look, all the chefs, all the judges are men.” And even if they're not doing it on purpose, and they may very well not be, they're identifying with these boys.
They would say to the boys, “Oh, my goodness, this is brilliant. You're going to have this fantastic restaurant.”
But to the girls, they would say, “Oh, this is fantastic. Is it a fluke? Do you think you could do it again?”
So there are endless opportunities for us to point out sexism. I don't advocate pointing out all of them, because it will very quickly be tuned out, get the eye rolls.
Pick your moments where you can say, “Hey, did you notice how that man didn't even look at me and he only talked to daddy? Sometimes that happens because men sometimes don't respect women, or they don't think women have the ability to be in charge.
But we know better than that.”
You write that one of the most confusing things about sexism is not knowing for sure that it's happening.
I think in part we’ve come to believe that sexist things and sexist behavior is normal. We've internalized the sexism ourselves. Like, “Maybe I'm overreacting? Maybe I'm reading into this?”
It's one of the reasons why I talked to my daughter about how they may not even know they're doing it, or this might not even be happening, but we need to keep our eye out for it. Somebody could look past you and talk to the person next to you. And you're like, “Wait a minute, did they just completely ignore what I said? Or did they really not hear it?”
I also think we've really internalized this idea that we're overreactors, that maybe what we said really wasn't very articulate, or very important.
That's where your colleagues or your friends come into play. The people who witnessed it and can validate you. Like, “I saw that too.”
I want to ask you about social media consumption. You encourage parents to mentor rather than “hyper-monitor” social media.
Right, because they have misogyny at their fingertips? They have 24/7 access to the news, which often involves violence against women, and politicians that are debating their bodily rights. Mentor, not monitor — a line that Devorah Heitner uses all the time — means you're teaching them to have a critical eye for what is being sold to them.
[Jo-Ann sent this follow-up email to me after our conversation]:
By mentoring, I mean telling your daughter that girls who are heavy users are more likely to be depressed than light users; that research shows kids feel worse about their bodies when they spend too much time on social media.
Parents can empathize with them about the pressure they feel from friends to be constantly available and talk to them about setting boundaries. They can remind them that the algorithms are tracking what they click on, what they hover over, so if they're feeling particularly insecure about their eyelashes and click on lash extensions, the algorithm can identify that they're extra vulnerable to advertising and essentially prey on their insecurities.
We can ask kids to reflect on how they feel when looking at certain accounts and consider unfollowing that account or at least spending more time on accounts that feel more useful and empowering to them, such as body positivity accounts.
The idea is to make sure you're having conversations about the evils of social media without throwing out what's also social, educational, and validating for kids, without demonizing something that’s part of the fabric of their lives.
What’s one final thing you really want folks to know?
Parents think, “I'm not sure there's any thing I can do about that.” And actually, you can. You can notice it in your home. You can notice when your son is talking over your daughter, because statistically speaking, it's going to happen.
Statistically speaking, your husband is probably interrupting you.
The more we can say, “Hey, wait a minute, can we let your sister have a chance to talk?” And talk to her about being assertive, and then talk to her about what might happen if she is assertive. That she may be seen as aggressive, but no, she’s not aggressive.
She's just having an opinion. Just like everybody deserves to have an opinion.
You can pre-order Jo-Ann Finkelstein’s book, Sexism & Sensibility: Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls in the Modern World or subscribe to her excellent newsletter, The Feminist Parent, here.
Remember, for just a few more weeks, paid subscribers will get access to weekly subscriber chats, thoughtful essays (like Lane’s amazing piece about Ballerina Farm and the weird Christian Nationalist dream).
There are so many great moments in this interview!
I loved the suggestions to call out gender bias within family discussion too, but also this re: how to talk about the election:
“You're pointing out to your little girls, to your teenagers, and to your kids all genders: “Look what's happening. They're not focusing on her policies. They're focusing on her gender, and they're trying to make you not like her because of their gender.
It’s to show them that the culture is broken, not them.”
Book sounds amazing. I’m raising a daughter and just preordered. Thanks for this interview.