‘Feisty’ is one. ‘Bossy’ gets a lot of press. And don’t get me started on ‘working mother’. How many men have you heard described as ‘working fathers’, let alone ‘dadpreneurs’? Subtly sexist words about women and girls. Not the obvious, awful insulting words (which are depressingly many and varied), but the ones that fly […]
A little visitor came to our house for the first time recently. This was the conversation between the visitor and my four-year-old son, SBJ: Visitor: Whose bike is that? SBJ: Mine! V: It can’t be yours. It’s pink. Pink is a girl colour. SBJ: No, colours are for everyone. Pink is one of my favourite colours. […]
Wow! What a lovely response to my post on sexism in kids’ TV shows and movies (the whole post is here and it’ll make your blood boil!) Thomas suggested on Twitter that I make a quick reference guide in a separate post. And Tricia suggested on Facebook that she’d love a poster for her kids […]
A friend of mine is preaching her first sermon tomorrow morning. Woo hoo! Tonight I wanted to wish her well, in words of encouragement that caught both the weight of responsibility that comes with this calling, and the lightness you can access when you remember you’re part of something so much bigger than your own […]
Oh, the shame! I love the days when my 2.5 year old son gets mistaken for a girl (Yus! No arbitrary gendered fashion advice for us, thanks!), when he plays with a tea-set, or when he says his favourite colour is pink (just the once, and I’ve seen no actual evidence of this, but it’s […]
At the moment in my corner of the church world (I’m a Kiwi Baptist), the number of our 250-odd churches in New Zealand led by a woman (as the sole or senior pastor) is in single figures. Low single figures. It seems likely that by the end of the year there will be only two such churches […]
The wonderful Lucy is hosting an International Women’s Day link-up at Lulastic and the Hippyshake, so head over there for a great collection of posts. It’s International Women’s Day, so without further ado, here are 8 ways – some easy, some not – that you, yep, you can make the world a better place for girls […]
At Christian conferences and leadership events I go to and speak at, women up the front are always – always – in a small minority. (It’s the same on all of the governance boards I’m on.) Very often, when I mention this to organisers, they say with regret that they just couldn’t find more women […]
In a pleasingly familiar story, Debbie Sterling, a Stanford engineer, wants to introduce girls to the world of engineering. She’s created GoldieBlox, a set of adventure books, where the reader helps Goldie solve problems using mechanical tools that come with the books. Debbie funded GoldieBlox through Kickstarter, reaching her goal in five days. Yay, Debbie! […]
If you had a six-year-old child, and institutional schooling had never existed, how would you go about preparing them for adult life? In the next few posts on unschooling, I want to tease out a few different issues and discuss them separately. Today it’s the different social experiences schooled and unschooled (or homeschooled) kids have. […]