{"id":583,"date":"2014-03-11T22:23:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/ban-bossy.html"},"modified":"2014-03-11T22:23:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T22:23:00","slug":"ban-bossy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/ban-bossy.html","title":{"rendered":"“Ban Bossy”?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So what do you make of this new campaign<\/a>? \u00a0According to the website, <\/p>\n

When a little boy asserts himself, he\u2019s called a \u201cleader.\u201d Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded \u201cbossy.\u201d Words like bossy send a message: don\u2019t raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys\u2014a trend that continues into adulthood. Together we can encourage girls to lead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s sponsored by Sheryl Sandberg\u2019s LeanIn.org and by \u2014 who else? \u2014 the Girl Scouts. \u00a0And, in looking at their website, I was skeptical: \u00a0one of their claims is the debunked \u201cGirls get less airtime in class. They are called on less and interrupted more.\u201d \u00a0And in one of their PDFs, they cite \u201cFailing at Fairness\u201d<\/a> which I had read previously and didn\u2019t find at all credible.<\/p>\n

So I asked my son, in 5th grade, who hangs out with the girls in his class, so I figured he would know. \u00a0\u201cWhen you work on group projects, are boys or girls more likely to be the leader? \u00a0When girls take the lead, are they called bossy?\u201d \u00a0His answer was that boys were more likely to lead (which he defined as the one who didn\u2019t hesitate to give ideas, one right after the next), but that no one criticized girls, either.<\/p>\n

Then I asked him, \u201care there kids who are bossy in your class?\u201d \u00a0And he said that there were, big time \u2014 but then narrowed it down to one girl, who liked to bark commands at him, like \u201cget out of my way.\u201d \u00a0Apparently, he and this girl don\u2019t get along: \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a long story, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I asked my facebook friends what they thought. \u00a0One friend pointed out that, among the younger girls she sees with her daughter, adults are more quick to intervene in the case of a bossy girl, trying to make her playmates play what she wants, than a similar boy, which seems to be a matter of adults being more concerned about girls\u2019 social relationships than boys\u2019. \u00a0And it is certainly true that neither a boy or a girl demanding that their peers do what they say is called or acting as a \u201cleader.\u201d \u00a0In this sense, \u201cbossiness\u201d can really mean social skill deficits, if a child can\u2019t be flexible enough to take turns choosing the game or activity.<\/p>\n

But another friend said that her middle school daughter had indeed experienced the situation that when she or another girl takes the lead in getting started with a group project, they are called \u201cbossy\u201d when boys never are. \u00a0(Not that the boys are praised and called \u201cleaders\u201d but they\u2019re just not criticized.) \u00a0 And what she said is that the boys and girls both call such take-the-initiative girls \u201cbossy.\u201d <\/p>\n

This is an initiative that\u2019s meant to \u201cgo viral\u201d with the instruction to website visitors to post \u201cbanbossy\u201d to their social media. \u00a0And the aim is to get girls, and women, to feel comfortable being assertive; one example was sending food back at a restaurant. \u00a0But if a girl is labelled \u201cbossy\u201d by other girls, then there\u2019s a social dynamic that doesn\u2019t have as simple a fix as a twitter campaign.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all I know about that.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So what do you make of this new campaign? \u00a0According to the website, When a little boy asserts himself, he\u2019s called a \u201cleader.\u201d Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded \u201cbossy.\u201d Words like bossy send a message: don\u2019t raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Ban Bossy"?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So what do you make of this new campaign?  According to the website, When a little boy asserts himself, he's called a \u201cleader.\u201d Yet when a little\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/ban-bossy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Ban Bossy"?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So what do you make of this new campaign? 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