Girlfighting: Betrayal, Teasing and Rejection Among
Girl
The Women's Resource Center
in the Division of Lifelong Learning, will host Lyn Mikel
Brown, as a visiting scholar at the University of Maine in
a project funded by the American Association of University
Women Educational Foundation. The project is designed to gain
a better understanding and knowledge of the friendships that
girls have with one another, how they are supportive but
can also be destructive. By understanding the nature of girls'
friendships and incorporating this knowledge into our ongoing
work, we can help the girls in Maine to resist the pressures
to conform or be ostracized by those they most want to impress.
Girls depend on close, intimate friendships to get them through
life.
The trust and support of these relationships provide girls with
emotional
and psychological safety nets: with their friends behind then,
girls will do
and say things that are remarkably creative and brave and "our
of
character." With their friends at their back they will stand
on principle,
rebuke a school bully, report sexual harassment or abuse, develop
a
radically new idea to fight stereotypes.
Girls are also extremely tough on other girls. They talk behind
each
others' backs, they tease one another, they police each other's
clothing and
body size and fight over real or imagined relationships with
boys. They
promote a strict conformity to group norms and rules, reinforce
gender and racial stereotypes, and in this way hold each other
back through threats of exclusion and rejection.
This project is not so much an attempt to reconcile the seemingly
irreconcilable differences
between these two stories, but to understand how both arise from
a common source. That is, both reflect girls' struggle for voice,
love, safety, and legitimacy within a patriarchal culture. Girls
desperately need the support of their friends to remain emotionally
and
psychologically whole in a world that takes them less seriously
and subordinates their needs and wants to those of boys.
It is also easier and safer and ultimately more profitable,
in such a sexist climate, for girls to take out their fears
and anxieties and anger on other girls rather than on boys.
The project will provide the Women's Resource Center with information
and a perspective on gender
equity programs and initiatives that have beenundertaken over the
years and to strengthen our ability to address the societal,
institutional and emotional barriers that have impeded our
work.
The Women's Resource Center is dedicated to the advancement and
support of women. We will be participating in and supporting
community outreach, academic programs and girls groups.
The objective of
this research is to support and advance innovative and effective
gender equity policies and programs by providing girls, adults,
policy makers and practitioners with; accessible, informative
writing, presentations and seminars on how gender stereotypes
and unequal power relations strain or damage girls' relationships
with each other. We will also provide suggestions for explicit
strategies and programs that encourage healthy, supportive,
responsive relationships between and among girls; relationships
that have the potential to break down destructive messages
and counter social realities that contribute to feelings of
mistrust and alienation. There will also be opportunities for
open discussions and collaboration on gender equity issues
and practice, particularly as related to girls' friendships.
For further information contact:
Sharon Barker
Women's Resource Center
101 Fernald Hall
Orono ME 04469
Phone: 581-1508
Fax: 581-1218
sharon.barker@umit.maine.edu
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