It was a surprise to me that, when I asked the teenage girls whom I met while making my series About The Girls for BBC Radio 4, their role models were usually found very close to home. Sure, Kylie Jenner and Taylor Swift got the odd mention – largely for their impressive business acumen – but on the whole, the women that these teenage girls were watching were their mothers, aunties, sisters, cousins, teachers, coaches and grandmothers.
During their teenage years, when friendships can be fraught with emotion, girls talked about finding a “sisterhood” among these women in their lives. Feeling solidarity among your peers can be hard, they explained, when some seem intent on making your life a misery. Grannies and godmothers can lend perspective and calm, offer hope and some respite from the relentless insecurity of teenage life.
Mums and grandmas who had broken “their own glass ceilings” by being the first to finish school or attend university were studied by the girls I spoke to. The daughters and granddaughters of tenacious and ambitious women had been shown at first hand what it takes to succeed and to lead. Meanwhile, cousins who are just a little way ahead on the path to independence, relay news from the journey back to their younger female relatives. They give them ideas about what careers are out there, show them what’s possible to achieve and sit alongside them as they google their dreams.
I spoke to students who have seen their mothers repeatedly passed over for deserved promotions – before finally getting the job – who seem to have acquired strength and confidence by being there on the sidelines to console and rail before eventually celebrating together. Valuable lessons about navigating the world as a woman are easily learned when they are so up close and personal. But what happens when they aren’t so close to home?
Beyond family, the girls I spoke to were bolstered by other women. Staff at school, youth workers at clubs and sports coaches make a tremendous difference to the way girls see themselves. In the weird and distorted world of social media – which is so integral to their experience of real life, too – girls can feel a pressure to perform a fairly uniform version of femininity – which is often not who they really are (or want to be) at all.
And so, trying to gain popularity at school (or at least avoiding being made fun of) and clout online by making sure you appear a certain way leads. Dr Hannah Yelin, from Oxford Brooks University, told me it becomes a weird kind of “dissociative act”. “Observing yourself while you are doing something”, she explained, “is so harmful.”
Girls told me that the role models they see on social media are so “unrealistic” that looking up to them often prevents them from acting. It’s too hard to compare and compete with what they see as they doomscroll on TikTok. So they remain stuck and feeling smaller.
By contrast, dance teachers and netball coaches, who engage with girls in real life, fostering their sense of who they really want to be, in ways that can be loud, expressive, confident and full of fun, are role models who are easier to emulate. “I find it easier to express myself on a court”, said one netballer “At school, you’re expected to be more perfect. When you are playing sports, no one is trying to be perfect.”
I sat and listened to sixth formers discuss the sexist criticisms that female politicians face on the world stage, and then vow to use what they have learnt by witnessing the battles others have won, as their own guide
I spoke to more than 150 girls for the project, from all over the UK, the vast majority aged between 13 and 19. The interviews took hours to record and weeks to edit – time which allowed me to thoroughly consider their incredible thoughtfulness and insight. They are remarkable, and what they said will stay with me for a very long time. But so will the challenge set by the series, of being the kind of woman that they might just look up to.
I realise we don’t have to be their mothers to matter: we can support sports clubs and youth centres, or get involved in the work done by organisations like Inspiring Girls, which takes role models into schools to show career ambitions can be expanded beyond gender stereotypes.
I sat and listened to sixth formers discuss the sexist criticisms that female politicians face on the world stage, and then vow to use what they have learnt by witnessing the battles others have won, as their own guide.
There was certainly a sense among the girls I spoke to that “having it all” is not desirable, confirmed by research carried out by the Girls Day School Trust which found that girls aged nine to 18, from all kinds of schools, are twice as likely to say they want to do a job they enjoy rather than to be rich, if it is at the cost of their values or their sanity.
That said, they were clear that older women have left a trail of breadcrumbs behind them, showing them how to use the “superpower” of being a woman to lead in a different way than men. And we can all share our expertise and tell them what we have learnt along the way. Knowing that they are watching us should be an inspiration to us, too. Every woman has the potential to be a significant adult in a girl’s life, and by being so could play a real part in helping to shape that life in ways a girl could never have imagined.
Catherine Carr’s series ‘All About Girls’ is available to listen to on BBC Sounds
