Growing women leaders? Start with empowering young girls in Tallahassee | Opinion
Across the country, women are making strides in both STEM and in Congress, comprising 27% in STEM fields and 28% of Congress at large, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While these gains should be celebrated, women are still vastly underrepresented.
One solution to this? Investing in girl empowerment.
This summer, I worked as a counselor for The Oasis Center for Women & Girls’ Girls Can Do Anything! Camp in Tallahassee. This camp is deeply invested in the empowerment of local girls anywhere from 5 to 15-years-old. Over the eight weeks I spent with every single outspoken, fun and joy-filled girl, I learned many lessons about the current state of girlhood. The most eye-opening lesson is that they are all paying attention.
The girls pick up on how their body looks. They see weight and how different articles of clothing look on different girls. They remember how boys stare at their budding bodies. They see girls who are smaller and skinnier and wish for their bodies to look like that.
They notice how the world responds to other girls and female celebrities they adore. In the same breath they can break down Olivia Rodrigo’s love life, but they can also explain the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They are privy to male-dominated careers and note how many women, if any, are in those rooms. They understand that their identities are more political than ever, so, they choose not to compete but cultivate community with each other.
Despite everything, they continue to be empathetic, kind, caring, spunky and lovables. They came in eager to help, love on other girls, listen to me tell “dollar tree” jokes and learn more about themselves and the world we all live in.
They took charge of projects, spoke their minds unabashedly, and were themselves without fear of reprimand. I would be remiss to not mention the girls who didn’t help, or love on others (and often, themselves), and constantly complained. Some girls redirected conversations from “what to do when you feel insecure about your body,” to “why body positivity is important enough to talk about.”
Some girls who came even tried to bully other girls - which was immediately shut down. I helped them learn that there are people who will try to cloud our sunshine-y day - that is life. They taught me to keep going because the sun still shines brightly even behind the clouds.
They learned new things, tried different things, gained new sisters that they are excited to see next summer, learned about a passion project of mine: practicing what I call, “leading with love,” and extending grace to everyone who crosses their path. Words cannot quantify everything I got from this camp, but I hope they gained as much as I did.
Here in our mighty city of Tallahassee, we only have two organizations (Oasis and Dare to Dream Young Girls Network Inc. that service girls and only one organization serving both women and girls. This is incredibly disheartening. While these organizations do great work, they absolutely cannot do it alone. There are too many girls in town to all be serviced by these two nonprofits.
These organizations need more donations, more volunteers, and more local women who can dedicate their time to young girls and empower them, and more local and national politicians - women and men - speaking up for and protecting young girls and women..
Kayden Washington of Tallahassee is a current freshman at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she plans to continue protecting young girls and leading with love.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Growing women leaders? Start with empowering young girls in Tallahassee | Opinion
