It’s no secret that what we experience/do as a child will stay with us as we grow older and during adulthood. Sometimes unknowingly we let key events in our adolescence lurk in our subconscious and determine everything we do and exactly how we do it. That’s partly the beauty of life itself: we’re all different, and we all have intricate details in our past that make us who we are… but it’s not always a good thing.
Sometimes the importance of childhood and just how much it affects our later life is underestimated. We prefer to focus on worse case scenario events such as sexual abuse or being neglected by the parents, but what if the most detrimental ideology instilled in us from our youth (especially young girls) is perfectly normalised in our society? A common example is the saying “boys will be boys.” You may think this is just a harmless expression dismissing the foreplay between messy little boys who like to roll in the dirt and play with their food. However, if we are constantly implanting this get out of a jail card into young women’s heads, it can lead to the same type of dismissal but on a higher scale. First it’s “boys will be boys” when they tug on your hair, but next it will be “boys will be boys” when they grab your wrists aggressively and yell in your face. We are effectively excusing the savage behaviour of little boys because we assume they will grow out of it, and they do, but they get bigger and stronger and some will end up hurting somebody seriously, and because we have instilled from the get go that “boys will be boys,” young women will think this behaviour is acceptable. Vice versa, if young men are constantly being condoned for their wild behaviour they will grow up to feel entitled to it and will be unable to understand that it is wrong.
Another important aspect of a woman’s childhood (and everyone’s for that matter) is the vital belief that they can indeed ‘do anything if they put their minds to it.’ This is a dwelling phrase that has been thrown around from the beginning of time to all less than fortunate kids who think they have a disadvantage in life. If only we really informed young girls that they really can do anything. But no, instead, we like to limit our young women and enforce gender roles that insist that politics is a male dominated field and maybe you should stray away from that area. Women as a whole are extremely under represented in government worldwide. As of 2016, the global participation rate of women in national-level Parliaments is 22.6%. Given the common stereotype that women are weak, hormonal, and incapable of holding a debate, it’s no question why there are few women in politics, particularly in continent of Asia. As of February 2013, there are total of only 39 women in the House of Representatives in Japan, out of a total of 479 incumbents. This can’t come as much as a surprise though seeing as it was only in 1947 that Japanese women were given the right to vote. Our own US congress lacks female representation with less than 20% of congress being women (104 out of 535 members). Hilary Clinton is the first woman in American History to be the candidate of a major party in a US Presidential election, but even she herself has said many times that she has felt “discouraged” by others. She was told that politics was a losing game for women because she will never be able to partake in any debate without their appearance or “attitude” being analysed by the press. This is clearly a sexist standard which has been upheld for many decades and employed by our parents that women in politics simply doesn’t make sense.
We are living in a world where a woman can be one of the most successful athletes in the world (Serena Williams), be a final democratic candidate (Hilary Clinton), the third most successful author of all time (J.K Rowling) and still have our ability questioned by the likes of fragile men. We are the generation who has the power to finally change the world. Society begins with the child, and it is the parent’s obligation to raise children with an open, accepting mentality so everyone can have an equal opportunity. Personally, I say get with the winning team.
