GIRLS

Like boys, teenage girls bring their own special needs and challenges, as well as bringing a unique contribution to the church and to youth ministry. Sophia Network co-founder Jenny Baker separates gender fact from fiction, and looks at how we can respond to some of the pressing issues facing girls today.

When my boys were little, we did the whole nursery rhyme thing. Humpty Dumpty and Incy Wincy Spider were learned with enthusiasm and repeated ad nauseum. But we hit trouble when Harry heard the nursery rhyme ‘What are little girls made of?’ for the first time. Incensed that boys could be described as ‘slugs and snails and puppy dog tails’, he wrote his own version. Instead of the essence of femininity being ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’, he decided that the little girls were made of ‘wee and poo and blobs of goo.’ Looking back I’m proud of his early stand for gender justice, although I can’t say that I agree with his conclusions!

When a baby is born, the first question asked is whether it’s a boy or a girl – after all there isn’t much else distinctive to say about a newborn. And from that moment, boys and girls are brought up very differently – girls cocooned in pink fluffiness, boys expected to be active and adventurous. The debate rages about how much influence nature and nurture have, but there’s no doubt in my mind that our gender is a complex mix of the two. We can’t ignore gender in our work with young people, and there’s an urgent need for both male and female youth workers to understand the distinctive needs of both girls and boys. But there’s also a fair amount of twaddle written about gender, particularly within the church, so I think we need to bear the following in mind in any discussions about it.

Humanity isn’t divided into two neat, distinct, homogeneous groups – one male and one female. All kinds of factors affect the kind of people we become, not just our sex. There can be as much difference between two girls as there can be between a boy and a girl because of their upbringing, relationships with parents, class, ethnicity, education and so on. That’s why it’s more accurate to talk about ‘masculinities’ and ‘femininities’, rather than using the terms in the singular. Within any culture, there are lots of different ways of being masculine, for example, some of which have more status and power than others.

This article can be found in its entirety in the October issue of Youthwork magazine. Check out our great subscription offers now!