From the age of 10 why do girl pigeonhole themselves?

‘I’m not a maths person’ or ‘I’m not the sporty type’. Girls as young as 10 are shutting down the activities they think they are no good at.

Run these standardised test questions by your 10-year-old and listen to her answers.

When the holiday’s are over, Dad’s uncle (my great uncle) is coming from Italy to visit. This sentence contains an error in the use of a: A. capital letter. B. a comma. C. an apostrophe. D. brackets.

Anna opens a savings account. She deposits $4 in the first week. She then deposits twice as much money each week as she did the previous week. The total amount of money in the account is: A. always odd. B. always even. C. sometimes odd and sometimes even.

Many 10 year olds will respond with “I’m not an English girl” or “I’m not a maths girl” when faced with such questions. In other contexts, I’ve heard 10-year-olds say “I’m not a sporty girl”.

We don’t even know what they’re capable of at 10! But, they are being put in these environments where, rather than being playful, it becomes competitive!

And even when they are told the tests are not competitive, they are. We are sending signals to children that they are below par, or not where they should be. Even if teachers and parents are saying, ‘That’s great, you did a great job and we’re really proud of you,’ they are looking around them to others. And if they feel, even in a small group of four or five friends, that they sit at the bottom in marks, the message is clear:

“I’m not a smart girl.”

“I’m not athletic like my friends.”

“I won’t be doing maths/science in high school.”

They put a ceiling on their potential, and many of them carry that forward into years 6 and 7.

“We don’t even know at 10 what they’ll be like. Their brains are still developing.”

While researching this topic, I chased so many rabbits down so many holes:

1. girls’ passion for their pets;

2. their love of cooking;

3. how they wanted to make the world a better place;

4. their struggle with finding enduring friends;

5. what they see when they look into the mirror;

6. the messages encrypted in the digital wallpaper that fills their lives;

7. the first tentative steps of independence;

8. the brutality delivered by Covid-19;

9. the anguish of depression, self-harm and eating disorders;

10. the search for self-esteem and the monster that body image sometimes presents.

11. But the one that got me in the pit of my stomach was how 10-year-olds are determining what they see as their future path … in year 5!

Many of them then author their own story. They stop trying in a particular subject. They withdraw from the hockey team. They decide the science club is not for them – it’s for the “science girls”.

“I can’t do maths.”

“I’m not good at sport.”

“I can never get my homework done on time.”

“I worry about schoolwork because I’m not good at it.”

“I am bad at school stuff.”

“I worry about not being able to go to high school because I’m not smart enough.”

None of them say they are not good at

being kind,

or having empathy,

or playing an instrument,

or sewing,

or debating,

or being a pet owner,

or any number of other talents that can be just as important, if not more important, than a year 5 maths quiz.

“My daughter thinks because she isn’t getting As at school, she’s not smart,” one mum wrote to me. “I find that sad.”

Another says this: “She can’t even ride a bike, and now she will no longer try.”

Another: “She’s given up on sport because she has a high standard and doesn’t believe she’s any good.”

And yet another: “She won’t make the most of her talents because she is terrified of making mistakes or looking foolish.”

And so it goes on – a fear that girls are pigeonholing themselves at the age of 10 and 11.

Most of these limitations can be the result of gendered views of what boys and girls should or could do in families. But potential is also being limited by what, at this age, girls internalise.

“This is often very unconscious, but they take on board the values around them and the feedback they get as being either successful or not successful.”

That can affect the confidence they then have in engaging in tasks – like maths. And their confidence and expectations will shape how “brave” they will be in terms of future engagement.

The tendency of young girls – and, often inadvertently, their parents – to put a ceiling on their talents frustrates educators the length and breadth of our nation. The principal of a school in Mumbai, India, sees this journey, for many girls, as part of their search for identity.

They take on the messages of those around them, and that can quite quickly deliver very closed options for themselves. The principal and almost everyone else canvassed, raises the issue of whether we might compliment our children too much:

“Parents tell them a lot of what they’re good at. You know, rather than rewarding them for the work that they do, or for the challenges that they face, or the things they try, there is that whole constant praise thing, which limits the girls potential.”

It sounds like this: “Oh, that’s beautiful artwork, but then you’re such a wonderful artist.” Rather than: “You worked so hard. You must be proud of that; it took 10 hours.”

A deputy head of school, says that if you ask a girl why she says she’s “not a maths person” she’ll say, “Because I’m not good at it.” Sometimes he sees the penny drop when he explains that perseverance can change that. “And it seems to be far more prevalent with young women than it is with boys,” he says.

Girls could sometimes internalise criticism and take an exam result personally, rather than see it as “a mark on the page”. He provides this analogy: if a boy was told he had made a mistake at football, he’d think he didn’t kick the ball well in that particular match; it would not become an issue about him as a person. A girl, however, would be likely to take the mistake personally.

Educators say that if a child has made up their mind they can or can’t do something, it’s difficult to shift that mindset. It’s prompted some schools to cross subjects – for example, to include art in science, or technology in maths. “So the learning comes together so you can see the application of what you’re doing and think less about things being compartmentalised along subject lines,” one educator says.

Another explains an early entrepreneurship focus, where children are encouraged to create a product, pitch it, sell it and create a business plan. The idea, from beginning to end, is to open closed minds.

A Mumbai high school principal says schools need to be strategic with their timetabling, to provide girls with a smorgasbord of experiences so that they don’t narrow down their interests and abilities too early. “Schools do have control over how they can help facilitate not pigeonholing girls at that age,” she says.

But constant work has to be done to ensure that girls continue to “reach for the stars”, step out of their comfort zones and be part of a “culture of inclusion”. It works best when parents and the school engage together.

So what advice would we give those parents whose girls are wobbly over continuing activities they don’t win at? To listen more than we talk. Keep the lines of communication open. And don’t use our daughters to fulfil our own dreams!

How would you try to avoid your daughter pigeonholing herself? What do you think? Write to us at say.daughtersofindia@gmail.com with your views.

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