As girls reach adolescence, many of them bury their academic selves. Boys tease or ignore girls for many reasons: competition, insecurity, or lack of understanding, to name a few. She boils this down to If I'm too smart, he won't like me. And being liked means everything at this age. Added to this, popular girls will label a smart girl as a "brainiac" and shut her out of social circles. Fearing this kind of shunning, many girls going into high school willfully dumb down their academic selves. Researchers are still trying to piece together exactly why. Pipher points out that girls tend to thrive in smaller cooperative environments. Girls would rather maintain their friends than compete for a deserved award.
Enter math, science, and problem solving - skills that are becoming more important in an increasingly tech-savvy world. Studies show that teachers teach these subjects and skills differently to boys and girls. For example, when students hit a snag in problem solving, teachers tend to rescue girls, while they encourage boys to figure their way out. Teachers may think they are helping girls in this way, but by providing the extra help, a teacher may actually be doing harm. Research shows that giving too much help fosters dependency and undermines mathematical confidence. Girls who experience extra attention often walk out of their math and science classes unsure of themselves.
This practice has repercussions as girls move into their twenties and venture into the workplace. They experience stark gender gaps in pay and opportunity. In 2004, for example, female executives and managers, including chief executive officers and chief financial officers, earned only 70 percent as much as their male counterparts.
Female attorneys made less then three-fourths of male lawyers' incomes. Female doctors and judges earned only half as much as their male counterparts. The disparities go on, from architects to biochemists to entertainers. This sends a sobering message to teenage girls, who are trying to stitch together their new academic selves. They hear "Just Do It" from Nike, but when they take a job, they soon realize that they cannot "just do it," at least not at a pay scale on a par with men.
Some women react in anger. Others pull back, choosing to fight what they see as failure by not trying. Erikson notes that entering a world of limited opportunity can damage the formation of healthy self-esteem. In order to develop a healthy academic self, and perhaps a vital career self, a teenager will have to let her intelligence and ambition shine. She will have to balance the desire to fit in with the desire to succeed. She will have to identify what success means to her and start drawing from her other selves to achieve that. Tapping her thinking self, for example, she maps a strategy for a career plan.
Her emotional self can guide her by genuinely responding to internal cues about her likes and dislikes. She will have to find teachers and mentors to help her overcome the obstacles hindering her success. She will have to find her own voice to speak out about what she wants to achieve.
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